


it’s like you told me, go forward slowly

by elenoir



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Character Study, Future Fic, Jealousy, M/M, Mutual Pining, Post-Time Skip, basically hinata owns every setter he meets, brazil fling is canon, daisuga does not make out but they do exist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:33:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 43,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24168916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elenoir/pseuds/elenoir
Summary: Kageyama Tobio is the nineteen-year-old who makes waves at the 2016 Rio Olympics, playing for Japan.Hinata gets a part-time job as a delivery boy in Rio De Janeiro. It’s convenient and frighteningly easy, at least after he learns to read the street signs.He kind of wants to hit something. The ball, into the opposite court, first and foremost - if not, then the ball directly into Miya Atsumu’s smug face would be a decent consolation prize.
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou & Oikawa Tooru, Hinata Shouyou/Kageyama Tobio, Hinata Shouyou/Miya Atsumu
Comments: 519
Kudos: 1507
Collections: stories that touched me





	1. i finally sat alone

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文-普通话 國語 available: [it's like you told me, go forward slowly](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25306345) by [meatisgoddd](https://archiveofourown.org/users/meatisgoddd/pseuds/meatisgoddd)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> part one, ft. Brazil, Miya Atsumu, and a ghost with a familiar face

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve never written for Haikyuu before, so this was kinda scary, but I love, love, love these characters so much that it just kind of wrote itself.
> 
> This work also has a [Chinese translation.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25306345)

Kageyama Tobio is the nineteen-year-old genius setter who makes waves at the 2016 Rio Olympics, playing for Japan. The game is lit up on screens across the globe, from Paris to Miyagi Prefecture. 

Kageyama will later attribute the win to teamwork, dedication, and, privately, a time in his life in 2013, when the question was: _what does it take to conquer the world?_

Hinata gets a part-time job as a delivery boy in Rio De Janeiro. It’s convenient, helps him pay rent, and, most importantly, is well within his skill set. Hinata is familiar with biking long, impossible, furious distances, and the job, compared to that, is frighteningly easy, at least after he stops getting lost, and learns to read the street signs.

* * *

[ dumbass shouyou ]

YOU DUMBASS 

_[4: 05 pm]_

that’s the fourth time this week, isn’t it ? 

_[4: 07 pm]_

learn to fucking read 

_[4: 25]_

hello? 

_[4:45 pm]_

hinata?? Are u dead

_[5: 01 pm]_

_1 Missed Call_

pick up idiot 

_[5:08 pm]_

_2 Missed Calls_

HINATA 

_[5:23 pm]_

r u ignoring me or r u in a ditch somewhere 

_[5: 51 pm]_

If ur dead im calling Natsu tomorrow. She deserves to know

_[6: 27 pm]_

_1 Missed Call_

Gn stupid

_[11: 33 pm]_

**_Read 6: 23 am  
_**

It’s ok 

I’m alive 

_[7:40 am]_

IDIOT

fucking stupid 

where’d u end up this time

_[8:32 am]  
_

funny story but I ended up going in a huge circle

I think I biked like a good 50 miles idk

 _[8:43 am]_

I got the delivery on time this time tho

I ended up exactly back where I started 

_[8:47 am]_

* * *

Here’s the thing: no one wants to listen to you cry about the grief inside your bones. It is for this reason, and this reason alone, that love is a sacrifice and that therapy is a well-paying job, if you’re good at it. 

Hinata has never been to a therapist, not even after his father died - he was young, then, really young, and his aunt had argued that perhaps he was too young to really remember his father all that much, and that seeing a lady who talked to him about loss once a week and psychoanalyzed the colors of his block tower might have more of a profound impact on him than the death itself. 

Who can say if his aunt was right, or if learning to properly compartmentalize grief would have done Shouyou any differently when he got older? A good therapist might say, _yes, children don’t simply forget - they’ll always remember, in some way,_ and Hinata might have said something like, “no, I don’t have time for that. I have volleyball, and that’s all that really matters.”

A decent therapist might say to that, _let’s unpack that statement. See where it goes._

Where does it go?

Shouyou is twenty, and he’s gone from Miyagi Prefecture, Japan, to Rio De Janeiro, the second most populous city in Brazil. He sometimes sleeps in a small apartment he shares with a roommate named Pedro, who is mild, agreeable, and entirely uninterested in volleyball. It’s okay; Pedro isn’t very interesting, himself.

In the day, he makes deliveries, and when he’s not making deliveries he’s playing beach volleyball, and when he’s not playing beach volleyball he’s pining for Miyagi, and then he’s back where he started. 

When Hinata first stepped onto the beach, something caught in his chest, tried to crawl its way up his throat. It tasted like shock, or awe, and it’s all he could do to swallow it down. 

Hinata never considered Miyagi to be small. As a child, he would bike up winding mountains in the cold of mornings that stained the clouds pink and bled like wounds into orange and red, all the way to the top, huffing and straining, all alone but for himself and the clouds and the great mountain. At the peak, there was volleyball, and something bigger than himself, bigger, even, than Karasuno. There’s nothing bigger than here, he’d thought. 

Brazil is endless.

The ocean rears back to collide with the horizon in strips of color, all turquoise and deep blue and white, so bold and bright that it nearly blocks out the sky. This will belong to him, and he will belong to it. He will not see Japan for two years.

Everything in Rio is different. He dreams differently, in Rio.

In Shouyou lives a house, and inside that house is an ocean. There’s a net, somewhere, and maybe a boat, but the most important thing in that house is a pile of bones sunk to the bottom, pecked white and clean, sitting on the ocean floor like discarded treasure. The bones tell him nothing, but the birds speak to him, sometimes, flitting above the surface of the water, up and into the clouds, wailing like children. The birds scream, and the house sits, and in his worst moments, a voice that sounds like a whisper caresses him, slinking off to where the dark things in him live.

The house has roots, still climbing, and there is an upset to the soil, something like closure, and separation, love, and self-loathing.

He’ll haul back the bones of the house on his back if he has to, and, well, that’s a lot to unpack.

Hinata’s alarm goes off, and he rolls himself half out of bed, fingers grazing against the carpet, one hand still clinging to his pillow. He got in a good seven hours, at least, and the morning has reared its head to greet him. He’s got deliveries in an hour. After that, volleyball. He squeezes his eyes shut again.

_Wake up, idiot._

“Shut up, Kageyama,” Hinata says to the empty space between the couch and the coffee table, and all of a sudden, he’s just so tired that he aches.

It’s not fair, not really. These are not the ghosts his mother knew.

He’s sick.

Homesick, that is. 

Sun-sick, maybe, of the way the heat alternates between stifling and burning, always hot and always there. He can’t escape it, not on the beach, not on the streets, not in his apartment, and not in other people’s apartments. (He tries, he really does. He learns how to make love to strangers, in different beds, in different languages. He can speak Portuguese now, and Goku and company from dubbed versions of _Dragon Ball Z_ are slowly teaching him English and Spanish. It’s slow, but it’s progress, debatably.)

He’s old enough to drink, and to look and to fuck, which makes him a man. He’s still restless, and small and looking to take on the world, which makes him a boy. The title, too, is up for debate.

He’s tired, too, more so than a boy or man has ever been, but he’ll put in his hours on the streets of Brazil, weaving over cobblestone, and then labor under the sun until his skin is brown, if that’s what it takes. I don’t need him, Hinata tells himself. I have myself, and wings, and a ball. That is enough.

He’s sand-sick, definitely. Sand refuses to push back, to give him the momentum he deserves. It shifts and sinks and lashes out at him, makes him graceless and immobile, makes him feel like a rookie at the sport he’s spun his entire life around. 

Every day, the sun sits like a jewel in the sky. It laughs.

Give me what I need, Hinata wants to scream. I need to jump. I need you to tell me that I have wings. Don’t keep me here, you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t dare.

The sand does not give him that comfort, nor does it lend him momentum. In fact, it doesn’t give him shit. Hinata, it jeers, you have legs. You have feet. What do you need me for?

Jump, Hinata.

I’m on the court, he thinks, and then he jumps. He has no wings.

_Dammit._

He hits the sand hard, and crouches down. I’m here. I’m on the beach. I’m in the sand.

Hinata straightens up, plants his feet. First, he sinks. Then, Hinata jumps.

Hinata Shouyou is eleven years old, and he believes in ghosts.

It’s some television program about the supernatural, the kind that children know they shouldn’t watch, lest they get scared, but do anyway, just to prove themselves wrong. On the screen, a white shape emerges, and Shouyou watches with wide eyes as it lets out an unearthly wail before shivering and receding back into the dark.

That night, when Natsu demands to cuddle, he opens the covers and lets her without saying a word. The next night, he begs his mother to let him sleep in her room. He drags a mattress into the doorway and swaddles himself in as many blankets as he can fit. He doesn’t sleep alone for a week.

Finally, his mother intervenes, a knowing look in her eye when he stutters, trying to explain the television program without sounding too incriminating. She kneels down, taking his shoulders in her hands, and looks him straight in the eye, determined to set this right. 

_Aren’t you going to tell me there’s no such thing as ghosts?_

_No,_ she decides, _because death is not an absolute. Just because something is dead, does not mean that it is gone forever._

_That’s not very comforting. Ghosts are scary._

_No, Shouyou. Ghosts,_ his mother says, _are nothing to fear, as long as you know what they want._

He can hear it still, sometimes, his voice, like it’s something imprinted in his skin, carried on his back.

He breaks a dish. He gets lost on his delivery route. He eats bad fish. He trips in the sand and drops the ball, and there’s an admonishment in the back of his mind that reaches out and makes itself heard.

 _Dumbass_. It is bitterly nostalgic, heavy with familiarity, and most importantly, unwelcome. 

Hinata brushes sand from his knees, picks up the ball, and shakes it off. 

The beach sits there sunning itself, a slim little sandbar marked by towers and steel-glass windows rising into the sky. It is common knowledge, here in Brazil, that these beaches are among the best in the world, offering a wonder here and there that cannot be seen anywhere else. There are beautiful men and beautiful women all warm around the edges. Girls wear pretty bathing suits that are red and blue and all sorts of colors, and they all trade words in different tongues, smile under their sunglasses and watch the clouds drift by.

A volleyball player stands at one hundred and seventy-two point two centimeters. Every day, he jumps, slams the ball down into the opposite court, and to a spectator it is like gravity has abandoned him, like he might just have wings. He is Japanese, and has lived here for two years, fighting to make a name for himself on a beach in Brazil. 

He steps onto the sand, breathes, and goes airborne. Past the sand, the shoreline glows green, like a gemstone, and the sun glares down at him with its famous, thousand-yard-stare. It grins.

_You’re here now, Shouyou. Your move._

Shouyou is not scouted. Instead, he proves himself, all over again. Hinata Shouyou has to try out for the MSBY Black Jackals, a V. League team that is the top tier of Division 1, just like everyone else. 

Here’s a secret: Hinata Shouyou is not like anyone else. It shows.

* * *

On the first day, Bokuto ruffles his head - like so many before him - and leads him onto the court by the hair, bouncing on the balls of his feet, nearly shaking out of his shoes. Kōtarō possesses a contagious sort of enthusiasm, and the nerves in Hinata’s stomach (the ones encouraging him to hurl) relent until there’s nothing left but the pleasant buzz of anticipation.

“Warmups, first,” Bokuto informs him excitedly, “and then I wanna see you spike!”

“Already?”

“He’s been waiting a long time for this,” he says with a wink and a nudge, and another figure slides into Hinata’s eyeline, hands on his hips. His hair is blond, betrayed by dark roots. His eyes are heavy. “You have no idea.” This new player is tall - taller than Hinata, which is to be expected, although not as tall as Bokuto. “Disciple, Miya Atsumu. Atsumu, play nice,” he says, like he’s scolding him. Hinata can’t help but get nervous all over again.

“Always.”

Kōtarō - his only friend and, up till now, his only ally, sidles off to join Sakusa at the opposite side of the room, spinning a ball between his hands and whistling cheerfully, leaving Hinata alone. The two players turn to each other.

“Welcome to the team, Shouyou-kun,” Miya smiles. It looks predatory. “Do you remember me?”

“Should I?” The leer slides off of Atsumu’s face. “It’s nice to meet you,” Hinata adds, and tries for a smile that Atsumu does not return.

“Hinata,” Bokoto calls out from the other end of the court, “what do you think?” Atsumu spins on his heel and stalks away without another word, leaving Hinata to gape after him.

The first thing he thinks is: Miya Atsumu is kind of an asshole.

On the second day, Miya approaches him with a wild look on his face, and asks to set for him. He doesn’t mention the day before, doesn’t even look ashamed. He doesn’t need to. He is a good-looking man. Everything in Hinata steels him to say no; his shoulders tense up, and his feet lock hard into place. His hands curl around his refusal, into small fists at his side. Still, that drumming, thrumming energy under his skin doesn’t get the memo, and his heart beats out a harsh staccato rhythm against his ribcage. His pinky finger twitches of its own accord. 

He reaches for the ball.

Atsumu tosses the ball into a high arch - Hinata’s nailed tosses higher than that before, and faster, but it’s clean and direct and will be so easy to hit - and without thinking, he jumps up, and Hinata’s hand - that traitorous hand - makes contact with the ball like it’s an old friend.

It slams against the floor opposite, and the _crack_ it makes echoes throughout the gym like thunder. Bokuto whoops in the background, punching a fist in the air, and Hinata examines his own palm. It’s not red.

The toss isn’t anything extraordinary, not yet, not really. It’s fast, though, and it’s good. He hasn’t felt that good in a while - sending a ball into the sand is nothing like the resounding sound of an indoor spike. It kind of sounds like his heart breaking.

It storms on the third night.

Thunder and lighting come in pairs, one before the other in a groaning chorus. The duos make their grand entrance hand in hand, like it’s the final show, and they’re the main act. They color the sky white, cracking through the night like a gunshot. 

Hinata doesn’t sleep.

On the fourth day, Hinata tries to settle in with the rest of the team, all of whom are extremely skilled, and extremely eccentric. 

Sakusa Kiyoomi, for example, is a native of Tokyo. He is twenty-two, like Hinata, and when he was only a second-year in high school, he was one of the top three aces in the country. He wears a white mask and gloves, and when he strips the things off he does so regretfully. Sakusa would have scared Hinata back when he was just a first-year, or at least unnerved him - Sakusa doesn’t glower. He stares. 

(“I asked about you, once, at a training camp a few years back. I didn’t know it then, but it was you, wasn’t it? The player who slowed down Shiratorizawa?”

“Huh?”

“We’re glad to have you. We watched you, you know, during tryouts. We watched your tapes, too. You were the team favorite.”

“Really?”

“Of course. Your reputation precedes you, Ninja. Also, you’re standing a little too close. Back up, a little. Further. A little more. Good.”)

Alright, then. Sakusa isn’t scary, just prickly, intimidating. He values personal space, at least, which is hardly an offense, and Hinata takes it in stride. There are four other teammates - Barnes, Meian, Inunaki, Tomas. Barnes shakes his hand, and Hinata is sure that his face is as red as his hair. He’s missed this feeling: volleyball is a team sport, undeniably, and it comes easiest when the team knows itself and each other, and accepts both for what they are. Of course, let the record show that volleyball has rarely come easy for Hinata. 

Case in point:

“Am I as good as your other setters?” Atsumu demands, the second Hinata’s heels touch the ground. He is one of the top setters in the country. They both know that.

They both know what’s being unsaid.

“He’s still ranked above you,” Hinata retorts without thinking, breathing harshly through his nose. It’s true. He’s never been good at subtlety, never been good at playing coy. Hinata plays games, like everyone else, but only on the same court. “It’s okay, Atsumu-san,” he adds quickly, too quickly, “you’re very good.”

“Don’t worry. I’m good at other things, too.”

He can’t tell if it’s an innuendo, or if he’s talking about setting.

Atsumu doesn’t say a thing, after that. He looks down at Hinata, chest rising in slow motions, then clicks his tongue and turns away sharply, reaching for another ball. 

_I get it, Shouyou. We all know he’s the goddamn best._

Hinata hears that loud and clear. He thinks he gets it, now.

The next day, when Hinata arrives, Atsumu is already on the court, halfway through his warmups. His movements are smooth and very practiced; his shoes barely squeak against the floor. He turns when he sees Hinata wave, and Hinata wonders if Atsumu looks more tired than the day before. In this harsh light, it’s hard to tell.

Atsumu saunters over to him, ball in hand, and Hinata meets him halfway.

“Toss to me,” is what he says in lieu of an apology, because that’s the goddamn best he can do.

Atsumu sets. Hinata spikes, and it’s like thunder and lightning.   
  


* * *

In his third year of high school, Hinata’s literature class reads _The Old Man and the Sea._ The author, Ernest Hemingway, is long dead. He was born in America, but wrote the book in Cuba. It is about an old man no one believes in, who cannot let go of a fish, and so he hunts it down even though everyone else thinks he’s crazy. In the end, it saves his life, and its skeleton serves as proof of his sanity. The book is in English, and too advanced for Hinata to understand on his own - English is his worst subject, hard as he tries.

Yachi seems to have this unwavering, undeserved sort of faith in him, though, because she coaxes him through it in her free time, helping him to make sense of it.

“You did not kill the fish only to keep alive and to sell for food, he thought. You killed him for pride and because you are a fisherman,” Hinata recites slowly to himself. It’s late into the night; the window reflects nothing but black. Even the street outside is silent, and empty. Natsu is asleep. So is their mother. He’s made a tent out of his blankets, propped a flashlight up against his cheek, and cradles the book carefully between his hands.

 _You loved him when he was alive and you loved him after,_ Hinata reads. _If you love him, it is not a sin to kill him. Or is it more?_

Hinata slides a finger along the spine and flips the book shut as quietly as he can. He clicks off his flashlight, and the yellow glow is extinguished, swallowed by the dark. He shoves the flashlight and the book onto the bedside table, and yanks the covers up to his chin.

_If you love him, it is not a sin to kill him._

He rolls onto his back and wonders what it all means.

The next day, in practice, Kageyama tosses the ball to him with a deceptively light touch; he catches it between his thumbs and fingertips. Over the ball, he can just make out Kageyama’s eyes. From this distance, they look obsidian, angry. He knows better.

“Tobio,” he says softly, aloud, “I’ll stay with you until I am dead.”

“What are you talking about?” he snaps. He’s too far away to have heard anything.

“Nothing,” Hinata says, and tosses the ball back. The sky outside peers through the windows, spilling light onto the gym floor and blurring their movements golden.

Here’s a hint: it doesn’t mean nothing. It will come back to bite him.

* * *

“So, whaddya think?” Atsumu asks later, panting in his ear. He slings his arm around Hinata’s shoulder, steering them towards the locker room.

“You’re not what I expected.”

“What about now, though? Whaddya think?”

“I don’t know. I -” I think about you a lot, is what Hinata does not say, “I have a lot of thoughts,” is what he amends it to, “and I’m not sure. Yet.” 

Atsumu’s gaze slides down to meet his own, and his mouth twitches into a lopsided grin that exposes one particularly sharp tooth. “Mostly good, I hope?”

Hinata doesn’t have an answer for that, doesn’t trust himself enough. It’s apparent that Atsumu Miya, is, at the very least, a force of nature, a thing that is egotistical, magnificent, and very smart. He doesn’t know how much of it is genuine or self-deprecating, and perhaps the depressing thing is that he wholeheartedly understands.

When they reach the locker room, Atsumu immediately releases him, grabbing at his own shoulder. His face barely flickers into something like a grimace.

“Did you pull something during practice?”

“Nah, I’m just sore.”

“Is it bad?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“You should get that kneaded out, before it gets too inflamed.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll…” to Hinata’s indignance, the setter doesn’t even try to sound believable. “It’s not that bad, right now, and it’s just in my right shoulder. I’m not -” 

“C’mon, idiot. I’ll do it,” he huffs, taking him by the elbow, much to Atsumu’s surprise. He manages to manhandle him onto a bench, perhaps a little harder than he should, but Atsumu is a big guy, and sometimes excess force is necessary. He would know.

“You’re stronger than you look,” he informs him appraisingly. From the bench, Atsumu has to look up at Hinata, and when he does, there's something there that frustrates Hinata inexplicably - he’s become adept with dealing with most difficult people - being attached at the hip with Kageyama Tobio for three years is a testament to that - but perhaps he’s lost his touch.

“You’re more of an ass than you look.” Hinata says, uncharacteristically bland, but Atsumu’s eyes, which had been lazily indulgent until now, only light up with delight.

“Oh, you’ve been looking?” Atsumu jeers, thrilled, leaning in closer. Hinata rolls his eyes, plants his hands on his hips.

“Take off your shirt.”

“I knew you couldn't resist me.”

“Your muscles are inflamed.”

“I can think of something else you can help inflame. If you want.”

“No,” he says shortly. Then, “if you mess up a set, how's that gonna feel, huh?”

“Not as good.” He winks. Cheeky bastard. 

“Strip.”

“Shouyou-kun, we’ve been teammates for such a short time, and already you’re taking advantage of me? And in a public place, nonetheless!” He puts a hand over his heart - or where his heart should be, if he has one. “I never expected this of you!”

“I’m helping you, you idiot,” Hinata bites out. “Now take off your shirt.”

Atsumu smirks down at him and complies, peeling off his shirt and flinging it aside. 

Hinata seizes him up.

It’s not that he’s exceptional. Hinata’s circle of friends, at this point, is almost exclusively pro-athletes, most of whom have trained all their lives to be at the peak of human condition. Hinata’s not blind. Hinata can call most of his friends objectively gorgeous - they’ve earned that, at least, and Atsumu is just as gorgeous as the rest. He’s a professional. 

Hinata pokes him in the shoulder, hard.

“ _OW_ , what the hell, Shouyou?”

“You are a pro, right? And you’ve gotten this far without at least trying to prevent basic injuries?” Hinata can’t help but be skeptical.

“Well, I -” Atsumu cuts himself off, lest he say something he really regrets. (Here’s a hint: Atsumu can, in fact, take care of himself. He’s a professional, and he’s done it for years. It’s just that right now, he doesn’t really want to. He wants Hinata to do it for him. For reasons.) “No,” he says, like a liar, “Osamu was always the worrier in the family, hehe.” Osamu the traitorous twin bastard, who left him to go work in food service. Atsumu will be happier than him one day. He thinks about that day a lot.

“Oh.” Hinata looks very unimpressed, and Atsumu curses himself, because that’s not what he was going for. Then, he offers, “Do you want some help?” and Atsumu goes from internally hitting himself to internally patting himself on the back, because that’s more like it. 

“If you wouldn’t mind,” he says, as pitifully as he can. “I don’t know if I can reach back there.”

Kōtarō’s whistling is interrupted by a low moan, barely audible - he pauses at the entrance of the locker room, hand hovering at the door handle. He wants to pack up and go home more than anything, way more than he wants to catch an eyeful of something he shouldn’t. Is it worth it?

He waits, but whatever is behind the door falls silent. He lets out a breath, takes a few steps backward, and kicks the door open, slamming it against the frame as loudly as he can. Two of his teammates jump apart, one clearly annoyed, the other strangely guilty.

“Am I interrupting something?”

“Yes,” Atsumu says, at the same time as Hinata’s, “No.”

They look at each other, and Bokuto makes the wise decision to back out, and close the door behind him.

Atsumu’s tosses are good. Really good, actually, not that he’d expected anything less. His tosses are always easy to hit, the sign of a pro-setter. Of course, Hinata can’t help but think, I know they’re easy, but are they really fun? The answer is no, for now. Too bad.

Here’s the thing:

Hinata is trying to see Kageyama in this man.

He watches his serves very closely, is statically aware of his movement on the court at all times. He pays attention to his other teammates, too, obviously. Everyone is needed in the game, and Hinata is not so young or old as to forget that.

Still, when Atsumu flubs a serve during practice, swearing magnificently, Hinata waits for a scowl to emerge. It doesn’t, and he’s almost disappointed.

Atsumu is the one who tosses to him the most, and everyone - the team, the coach, themselves included - holds their breath going in. They want to see what happens. They want to witness one of two things: a revelation or a train crash. Hinata isn’t sure which of them he wants to cause, personally.

It’s not fair, not fair to pit a teammate against a partner whose absence is so magnificent, not fair to compare a setter barely capable of speaking civilly to his own brother and lifelong friend to the boy who watched Hinata fly and promised that he would make him invincible. 

It’s not fair, but at least it’s not working.

* * *

Hinata is notoriously, obnoxiously good with people. He’s friends with a lot of difficult players, many of whom he’s triumphed over at some point. Half of the time, he’s not exactly sure why, or how, but he thinks it has to do with his disregard for personal space or formality. He can’t be sure.

“Half of the time I don’t know whether he hates me, or if he thinks I’m just fun to play with,” Hinata complains. On and off the court, Hinata thinks, Atsumu likes to play games. 

“Can’t it be both?” Kenma asks him, and Hinata can almost hear him shrug. 

“I hope not.”

“He’s worried, probably,” Kenma tells him over the phone, and Hinata wrinkles his nose.

“About what?”

“He thinks you won’t like his tosses.”

“What? I like them plenty. Atsumu-san is a very good setter.”

“Yeah, but you spent three years spiking for Kageyama Tobio. Even the likes of Atsumu Miya would be intimidated.”

Hinata doesn’t mention that for those three years, he and Kageyama were skinny kids still learning the game by learning each other. He’s seen Tobio run into glass doors, throw a tantrum because a vending machine was broken, and, after one particularly long night at his house that consisted solely of playing video games and decidedly no studying, trip headfirst down a flight of stairs.

He doesn’t mention that Atsumu Miya is ranked with the top in the nation in his own right, either. 

“He shouldn’t be worried,” Hinata says instead, burying his face in his arms. “Kageyama Tobio isn’t the only setter I can spike for.”

If Kenma has any other thoughts on the subject, he doesn’t volunteer them. Instead, the conversation veers into video game territory, and the matter is abandoned with no further resolution. Maybe it’s for the better. 

Atsumu doesn’t know whether his teammates have his best interests at heart, they’re nosy assholes, or they’re just bored. It might be some combination of the three. Regardless, when two of them corner him in his own apartment, hands in their pockets and looking like bad mafia imitators, he can’t help but let out a snort. How lame; are they all still in high school, or something?

“You’re acting like a dick,” Sakusa informs him. “Even more so than usual.”

“Thank you,” he responds, leaning against the kitchen counter. He knows he’s acting like a dick, because he kind of is a dick, honestly. It doesn’t bother him.

“It’s okay, we know why,” Bokuto adds helpfully.

“Is that so?” Atsumu takes a long swig from his water bottle while maintaining eye contact, just to show how unbothered he is.

“It’s because you’re in love with Shouyou,” he says confidently. Atsumu chokes.

Hinata Shouyou is sixteen, and he loves volleyball more than anything else. He is not the best in his sport, not by a long shot, but he could be, he knows it. 

He’s young yet, soft and malleable in a way that leaves room for growth, and hard in the right places, gritty and unbreakable in a way that hurts his bones.

Hinata is not the best in his field, but he’s damn near close. He can taste it.

Kageyama Tobio is fifteen, and he’s getting dragged around by the nose by some hyperactive, orange-haired little first year who he hates (because he’s _annoying_ and _loud_ and comes out of _nowhere, what the hell)_ and he won’t admit it, but he kind of loves it.

They argue all the time. They were arguing before they even turned in their application forms. Someone will snicker and point and say something like _oh, look, they’re fighting like an old married couple,_ but they’ll be wrong, just a little, because there’s already an old married couple on the team and it’s not them. They’re always together, though, and they’re often fighting, and Hinata burns bright and hot and brilliant as the sun and Kageyama is whipped, so that has to count for something. 

_What do you want, dumbass?_

_I want higher, faster, further. I want whatever you’ll give me._

He’ll give him whatever he wants, as high and as fast as he wants, because Kageyama Tobio aims to please: his aim is pretty goddamn good, and for a while, Hinata Shouyou is going to be pretty goddamn pleased. 

It won’t last.

* * *

There is a story about a boy who flees an island called Crete. He wears a pair of wings made by his father's hands, out of feathers, gold, and wax, and when he takes to the air, his pride gets the better of him. He flies too close to the sun, and his beautiful, human wings melt, to his father’s despair. The boy falls. The boy dies in the sea.

It is just a story. Here are the facts: The air actually gets colder the higher you go, the closer you are to the sun. Icarus would’ve been fine, depending on the crosswind. He would’ve made it, for all his ambition and his hubris weighed him down.

Why?

Easy. He had wings. He could fly.

* * *

Here’s the thing: everyone else is trying to see Kageyama Tobio in him, all at once, clamoring. They’re craning their necks, even, just to catch a glimpse. Hinata leaves Japan because he needs to find himself, he says, and those around him laugh a little at that, because when has Hinata Shouyou ever not known exactly who he was? When has he not used every opportunity to tell everyone who he was?

Hinata leaves Japan because there are parts of himself, burrowed deep, even deeper than the pieces of Kageyama that have wedged themselves into him like glass. Somewhere, there’s all Shouyou. He just needs to find it. He goes to Brazil because he needs to be faster, further, and higher, and only then will he meet Tobio again. It will take two years.

Somewhere across the world, Kageyama Tobio is aware of this, and he worries, but he also takes pride in the fact. There’s a lot of self-loathing going on there, a sort of darkness that Hinata had somehow managed to ward away in their high school years, but now it creeps back in his worst moments. Kageyama Tobio is once again alone with his thoughts, and that is never good.

_He has a part of me, but I’m a part of him now, and he carries it around on his sleeve like -_

_A burden._

_I was going to say a heart._

_I know what you were going to say._

* * *

Alright, here it is, the interlude: 

Hinata is twenty and lives in Brazil, and all this time he’s been bleeding out for Miyagi. He’s sore somewhere; not in his joints, or his muscles, but somewhere deep inside that beats and sings with the grief of being torn away.

The sun laughs from its immovable place in the sky, laughs and watches his open wound. It festers.

_(He fell in love with something, he let himself go, and he’ll come back on his own, blah, blah, blah, you know the rest.)_

The sun burns feverishly in the sky, unrelenting, and casts a white shadow over the whole of the beach, lighting up the sand like hot coals under his feet and illuminating the ocean waves like colored glass. It is hot in Brazil, and rightfully so. Every day, Hinata manages to work up a sweat. 

It’s dangerous, living in an unfamiliar city, alone - especially if you’re young and exotic and surrounded on all sides. Rio De Janeiro is always alive, always watching from the windows, always moving, and Hinata feels the urge to move with it, like a fever under his skin. He is half-a-year into his service to beach volleyball. He doesn’t know it, but today, he’s going to meet an old friend.

Oikawa Tooru is not supposed to be here. Brazil is just a pit stop on the way to Argentina - he won’t be here long, but he may as well enjoy his time, anyway, with practice matches and seeing the sights (oh, the sights he’s gonna see. I know. You know, too), both of which should be pretty easy. The beaches here are unapologetically beautiful, so exotic in its color and vibrancy that even the locals are constantly, subconsciously aware of it. They’d have to be, anyway. Tourism is a tangible, visible, thing, and pride must have its seeds.

(The last part is a play on words. You’ll get it later.)

He’s not quite used to this place, yet, and it’s not used to him - he is _not_ Ken Wattanabe, goddammit, are these people racist or blind - when something catches his eye and drags his attention to someone of short stature, vaguely familiar. Tooru can’t believe it.

Karasuno’s number ten, the little shrimp, all grown up. He is pink-white gone tan in deference to the sun, and he’s here in Brazil. “Is this real life?” he wonders aloud, in Japanese (he can’t cut the habit, and he won’t, because why would he?). 

The man who is no longer a boy gapes up at him, astonished.

[ tobiooo ノಠ_ಠノ ]

LOOK WHO I FOUND IN RIO! 

_[ Tap to Download ]_

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_[10:15 am]_

  
  


**Read 10: 20 am**

“You know, I was just getting ready to head to dinner. Show me where the good places are around here,” Tooru says with a smile. 

It’s then that he really looks at Oikawa, really looks, and doesn’t see the Grand King from high school but graceful lines of lean muscle, a long neck, and high, aristocratic cheekbones. Hinata _looks_ and thinks _I want_ and then, _huh._

They go to dinner. It’s fun, and not what Hinata would’ve expected.

(They have dinner first. Later, they’ll go to lunch. Then, they’ll fuck.)

Later:

“Hey, Oikawa-san? Earlier today, for a minute - just for one, short minute - I actually got kinda down and depressed.” It’s a confession, one that he’s barely given to himself, because it sounds too much like defeat. He perks up, suddenly. “But seeing you has put me in a super duper extra awesomely good mood, so thank you!”

Oikawa raises an eyebrow at that. “Oh? Treat me to lunch, then.” The way to a man’s heart is through the stomach, isn’t it? Hinata doesn’t really have time for that, but that’s okay. It can lead to other things, too.

Lunch, first. After -

Well, alright then.

It’s been a long time since he’s spoken to Tanaka. They send a few texts here and there, but these days, they’re both too busy to sit down and talk, but Hinata has not been in Brazil long enough to ignore the aching for Japan. When Tanaka volunteers a Skype call, he jumps at the chance.

The connection goes to shit pretty much immediately, which is to be expected, and for the first five minutes, Tanaka’s face is a blur of color that moves and freezes, on and off. Eventually, after they can make out each other’s faces as more than pixels and the audio will only cut out occasionally, Hinata is confiding his past week when he lets it slip. It’s innocuous at best, but it’s enough.

“You’ll never guess who I met up with!”

“Who?”

“The Grand King! I didn’t even know he was gonna be in Brazil, but he was pretty surprised to see me too!” Hinata laughs. “We played beach volleyball. He’s not very good at it, though, not yet, but I’m sure he’ll improve.”

“Woah…did you guys, like, hang out?”

“Yeah, and then he took me to dinner.”

“He - he took you to dinner?”

“A few times.” Hinata hesitates. “Well, all week, so far, but that’s mostly because we’re super hungry after practice, and it costs less to split the difference.”

“Wait, so this entire time, you’ve been having dinner with him? After you spend the day playing volleyball with him? For a week?”

“That and - other things.”

Maybe Hinata blushes too hard, or Tanaka has become more observant since he last saw him. Whatever it is, it’s not the right thing to say.

“Hinata.”

“What?”

“Tell me you didn’t.”

“I...didn’t?”

“You had sex with Oikawa?” Tanaka hisses, his eyes bulging. “Oikawa Tooru? From senior high? _That_ Oikawa? After a week?”

How many do we know, Hinata thinks, but bites his tongue.

“Once,” Hinata insists instead, defensive on instinct, and almost immediately flinches because it’s a lie. Technically, it was more than once, more like one continuous week. To be fair, he’d lost count. “It’s not a big deal.”

“Not a big deal?”

“No,” Hinata agrees. “Are you turning purple?” He can’t really tell. The screen is glitching again. “Should I call Kiyoko-san?”

“I’m - I -”

“Ryūnosuke?”

“I'm at a loss for words!” 

Despite being at a loss for words, he yells at Hinata for the next twenty-five minutes.

The story, the short version, goes like this: 

Hinata Shouyou, formerly known as Karasuno’s number ten, spends a week playing beach volleyball with Oikawa Tooru, The Grand King (also known as Shittykawa, according to Hajime, bastard-of-a-best friend he is). Oikawa relearns the basics, relearns himself, and remembers that he loves volleyball. Hinata, on the other hand, feels less alone. 

Hinata’s uninteresting roommate, Pedro, reads _One Piece_. Hinata finds out, and it is a joyful occasion. Pedro presents his own peace offerings: _Naruto_ and _My Hero Academia_ recordings, dubbed in Portuguese. 

Hinata and Oikawa play more volleyball. Hinata sets. They win. They eat together, a lot. It’s fun. Somewhere in between these things, they sleep together. That’s really not the important part.

It doesn’t last, of course. Oikawa belongs in Argentina, and Hinata belongs to the beach (for now, at least). When Oikawa says goodbye, he makes sure to include a threat - of course it’s there, of course, he‘s going to beat everyone, and then he’ll beat him, too, blah, blah, blah. Hinata sees it for what it is, though, and shakes his hand enthusiastically.

“Alright, take care of yourself, Shrimp,” Oikawa says, and means it. He pauses carefully, and adds, “Shouyou,” just to see his eyes light up.

The end. 

Really.

* * *

_“Why don’t you try asking that guy? He’s reaaally good, but during free times, he’ll pair with anyone.”_

  
  


_“Are you Ninja Shouyou?”_

“Me?”

_“Please partner with me!”_

* * *

Okay, back to present day.

“Man, Tobio-kun must’ve been having the time of his life in high school.” The ball falls to the ground, rolls out of bounds.

“Huh?”

“I -” Atsumu stops at the look on his face. “I mean, you two were the Freak Duo, right? Karasuno’s not-so-secret secret weapon?”

“Yes.” There’s no point in denying it, although that loyal part of Hinata vehemently disagrees; Karasuno was a team. They were talented, determined, and they loved each other, and that was almost enough to carry them to a win at nationals. That’s all there was to it.

“You’re Kageyama Tobio’s greatest weapon,” Atsumu says with great confidence, dismissively. Present tense. Hinata gets tense. “Greatest allies, greatest enemies” Atsumu shrugs, and the words are familiar somehow. “Everyone knows that on-court rivalries really work to get the blood pumpin’, eh? You made each other the players you are today. But he’s only one man, right?” He watches Hinata carefully, as if for confirmation. “If you could do that for him, imagine what you can do for us.”

Okay, so maybe Hinata does remember him after all this time. The Miya Twins beat them, once, after that first encounter, and now that he’s up close and personal with the evidentially ruder, snobbier twin, he can’t help but feel something hot prickling in his veins and coloring his face. Is this hatred?

No, that’s not it. He’s felt this before, in different ways, more with some people than others. Whenever he gets this way, all worked up without explanation, it’s always explosive. He takes a deep breath.

“I learned a lot,” Hinata says. “You’re teaching me a lot, too.”

“Is that what you really think of me?”

“Sure.”

“Have I taught you as much as he did?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Let me know when you do.”

“Are you doing this on purpose?” Hinata demands. Their faces are lot closer than they were a few seconds ago.

“Am I upsetting you?”

“You -”

Atsumu looks very pleased. “Go on,” he sneers, “don’t hold back on my account.” _Don’t hold back, Shouyou, not for me,_ he thinks.

“You amaze me,” Hinata allows, and the narcissist in Atsumu can’t help but preen under the praise, until he continues, “with your continuous ability to be an asshole.” 

Shouyou says it with a graceless sort of wonder, unthinkingly honest in the way that a child will loudly proclaim an unpleasant-looking man on the street to be exceedingly ugly, or inform an older sister of the acne lighting up her forehead. 

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Now isn’t a good time to tell you that I like you a lot, is it?”

“Not really, no.”

“Hm. Go back on the line again. I wanna try something.”

* * *

Hinata has this dream where he wakes up in a bed that does not belong to him, and something is Not Right. 

In the dream, he leaps out of bed, tearing back the covers with a ferocity that doesn’t quite fit him, and turns to shake his companion awake.

“Wake up,” he snarls, livid as an animal, stomping away from the bed. He throws the blinds apart, furious, and yanks the nearest window up with strength he didn’t possess mere moments ago - he is fuming, raging, roaring in his mind all the while. 

“Go on, Shouyou-kun,” coaxes a voice from the bed. “Kill him. He’s alive, but he could be dead, and as long as you really love him, it won’t matter, right?”

Hinata struggles with the window briefly, before it goes skidding and slams into the frame above, rattling in its slot - Atsumu shouts in protest while he ignores him - and bright light, real light, shoots onto their faces and nearly blinds the both of them.

The dream ends just as his vision is beginning to white out.

* * *

Before Bokuto and Sakusa ambushed him in his own kitchen, it was the strange absence of irritation that alerted him to it in the first place; maybe it’s because he’s been bred to kill on the court, not to nurture, and nondestructive tendencies don’t come naturally to him anymore. Still, when he realizes that he’s spent an entire practice session with Hinata basically screaming in his ear, whooping like a Bokuto-in-the-making, and Atsumu hadn’t once felt the urge to tell him to _shut the fuck up, Shouyou_ , he thinks -

Ah. This might be bad.

Hinata is a ray of sunshine, of rage, and of unintentional aggression. When he forgets that he hates Atsumu’s guts (it’s unfortunate, but a frequent side effect of getting to know Atsumu beyond acquaintance), he watches him play with the shiny-eyed awe of a little kid seeing fireworks for the first time. Atsumu thinks that’s pretty cool, that someone can watch him play and be so swept up that they forget that they think he’s an asshole, on and off of the court.

Sometimes, Hinata walks as if there are springs on the balls of his feet, like he has an endless supply of energy. Hinata is ecstatic to be here, he can tell, and it shows. He grins like a maniac all the time, switches between joyful and crazy-intense, and when someone makes a good call, he’ll bound over to grab them and shake them, chattering in excitement.

Atsumu can imagine it now, his energy pulling Karasuno along. Atsumu can recall their high school years in technicolor detail; he remembers Kageyama Tobio, the goody-two-shoes with a stick up his ass and no sense of humor, who had the world’s most entertaining hitter to play around with. He’d meant it, what he’d said to the pair when he first played opposite to them - he really did believe he’d see Tobio-kun again, believed that he was gonna make it pro and they would run in the same inevitable circles, and he really did believe that he’d toss to the redhead someday. 

Why? Because he wanted to.

* * *

[ osamu the shithead ]

So, I heard that you’re into the shrimp 

I’d say I was surprised but it’s not exactly a new development, is it?

_[10:15 am]_

Fuck off

_[11:12 am]_

Is he going to be meeting mom and dad soon

_[11:20 am]_

**Read 11:40 am**

* * *

Everyone has ghosts, empty things. For Atsumu, it’s his brother, the one who promised when they were very young to never leave his side, to always be his partner. Look how that ended up. 

Shouyou and Tobio-kun, he muses, probably have each other. Atsumu wonders, briefly, how this has shaped them as people and as players (there’s no real difference, is there?) but he doesn’t think too hard about it, because Miya Atsumu can do a lot of things - play volleyball, piss people off, make a good bowl of ramen, text with his eyes closed - and the most important of those things is being able to keep up with the narrative.

_Who’s tossing to him now, Tobio?_

_Does it matter?_

_Well, duh. Obviously._

_What does that even mean?_

It means that I made a promise, and sure, I’m an asshole, but I keep my promises, okay?

They perfect the quick strike, the one that was born years ago and then abandoned (he left it behind, along with two other things, but he could never forget it. It’s not in his nature). This one is different, uncertain, but it takes Hinata higher, faster, and further than he’s ever gone. 

It feels like a relief, like this entire trial has been one giant inhale of air, and when the ball hits the court he’s exhaling, letting it out in one big _whoosh._

From the sidelines, Orivier sends them a thumbs up, and their coach begins to make plans in his head.

“DID YOU SEE THAT?”

“We all did.”

“Did you see how FAST it was? You were all like _wishaw_ then I went _bam_ and the ball went _whoosh! Can you believe it?”_

“I saw it with my own two eyes.”

“Atsumu, you’re - that was -” he beams, a radiant thing - “amazing. Thank you.” He reaches out for him, to grasp his shoulder, to shake his hand, to hug him, anything.

Atsumu doesn’t show it, but he's ecstatic - he’s done the impossible, he thinks. He harnessed the sun, and now he’s touched the famous, minus-tempo quick strike and shaped it into a new image, his and Hinata’s own. He’s on top of the world. “Can I toss for you forever?” he asks, breathless. Aw, damn. He can’t hide how pleased he actually is, not from Shouyou. He meets his eyes, daring him to say something. 

I can’t help it, Shouyou. That’s just how I feel.

Hinata himself doesn’t quite know how to feel, only that this reminds him of something old and something good that he’s forgotten, or maybe something that he never got in the first place.

When he checks his palm, it is bright red.

It’s just them in the locker room, and Hinata was feeling perfectly fine until Atsumu made the executive decision to open his mouth and run with it.

“Is this why people hate you, Atsumu-san?” 

“Of course not,” Atsumu clasps his hands together, looking wounded. “Good friends are just hard to come by, ya’ know?”

“Oh, really?” asks Hinata, who makes friends wherever he goes. “So you can say and do whatever you want to them, and they’ll resent you forever, and that’s okay with you?”

“It doesn’t bother me. If it’s meant to be, they’ll come back for you.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Are you talking about that time last month when you got your finger stuck in a picnic bench, but you were too embarrassed to call the fire department to come and saw the bench apart, so you texted Bokuto to come and help you instead, but you forgot to tell him to bring any actual lubricant, so when he got there he just spat on your finger and pulled as hard as he could?”

“He told you about that?”

“Yeah. Is that what you’re referring to?”

“Yes, yes I am.”

“Okay.” Hinata turns, headed for his own locker.

“Where are you going?” Atsumu calls after him.

“To go put on clothes!”

He finds himself mumbling, “No, don’t,” before clapping his hand over his mouth.

“What?”

Cautiously, Atsumu lowers his hand.

“I said, do you wanna go to my place after this?” He hesitates, and takes stock of his surroundings. Most people don’t like being propositioned in locker rooms, he surmises, based on Hinata’s careful expression. Alright, so maybe he could have waited.

Hinata takes pity on him, though. “Buy me dinner first.”

“Okay.”

They go to dinner and Hinata correctly guesses that Atsumu has never been here before based on the time he takes examining the menu. That’s okay, he says, it’s an adventure for both of us, and promptly orders a bowl of chocolate ice cream off of the desert menu for his main course. 

They’re halfway through a bottle of Chardonnay, much to their waiter’s horror, laughing about the worst receives they’d ever made (“Once, I made two recieves in a row with my face -” “Yeah? I kicked a guy out of bounds just so that I could get to the ball first -”) when Atsumu opens his big, dumb mouth and says,

“You know, I watched recordings of all of your games, back to back, on repeat for a month straight, after you beat us that first time. It’s kind of embarrassing - I couldn’t believe it, when I watched the reruns. It was like a dream.”

“Karasuno’s old games?” Hinata asks, sounding strangled. “Kageyama was a genius. I get it.”

“No, you,” Atsumu clarifies, like an idiot. “I watched your spike over and over, and I just...I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. I made my teammates practice it with me, and everything. Osamu wouldn’t get off my ass about it, and he was the only one who could spike fast enough. The team was good, I’ll give them that, but you were the one to watch. In fact, I think I was in love with you for two weeks, give or take, hahaha...ehehehe…” he trails off as he realizes what he’s said. “Um.”

“Is the first offer off the table?”

“What?”

“Your place,” Hinata specifies. “You asked if I wanted to come over.”

* * *

At sixteen, Kageyama Tobio is not a particularly sexual being. It’s not that he has an aversion to it, or anything - he likes sex just fine, alright? It’s just that he’s always been too busy thinking about volleyball to have room for much else. Volleyball for breakfast, volleyball for lunch, volleyball for practice, volleyball for dinner, and on spins the wheel. Sex, in his mind, for the longest time, is this abstract, distant thing that he won’t have to worry about for a long time.

No one should have to worry about sex, whether they have a lot or a little or none at all. It is perfectly fine to wake up in your own bed, or someone else’s, or even a borrowed mattress. 

Eventually, of course, Kageyama Tobio does worry about sex. He’s a teenage boy, and maybe he’s a late bloomer, or maybe he’s just been too busy, but his first sex dream kind of traumatizes him. It is visceral and uncanny, full of strange sensations and disjointed visuals that make him feel hot everywhere and cold nowhere, and the relief he gets doesn’t feel like gratification at all. In the dream, his hands grip onto a head of thick, orange hair, and when he finds release, he’s staring into a flushed face that he thinks he knows.

When he wakes, he wonders what it means.

He eats breakfast, goes to school, and goes to practice. Then he has a realization, one that is a long time coming. After that, he starts to worry.

* * *

They fall into bed together. It’s a natural thing.

Are you in love with me yet? he asks with his hands, with the sinuous roll of his hips. He meets Hinata in a hot, open-mouthed kiss, and he surges up into it, breathing life into him.

Hinata drums against Atsumu’s bare thigh, fingertips tapping against skin, a universal signal: Go. I’m ready.

_Are you in love with me?_

_I could be, if I tried._

_Would you? For me?_

No answer.

After:

“Atsumu?”

“Yes, Shouyou-kun?” It comes out like a croon, and Hinata can’t help but reach out to swat one broad shoulder with the back of his hand. It’s barely a tap, but Atsumu jerks back and feigns hurt, as if Hinata had jabbed hard into muscle. “You wanted to say something?” He props himself up on one arm and graces Hinata with a slow, lazy smile.

Hinata isn’t ungrateful, and he knows when to be appreciative. He takes it in. 

Atsumu’s muscle mass is evident, especially now; Hinata’s seen it rippling, straining during practice, and now he’s seen it in action between the sheets. Those sheets are now strategically at his waist, positioned at his hips like a renaissance painting, drawing attention to the dark happy trail that leads to the space between his narrow hips. His pectorals are covered in a thin sheen of sweat - it’s not an unfamiliar sight, not out of place in a team locker room after a good workout, but Hinata has never been good at lying to himself, not really, and Atsumu’s hair is disheveled from when foreign, familiar fingers had gripped it in a fit of passion. His mouth tells the rest of the story. You don’t get that fucked-out playing sports, not even volleyball. 

You’re kind of an asshole, Hinata thinks, but in here, you’re a vision. 

Atsumu seems to follow Hinata’s train of thought, eyes trained intently on his face, smugly watching him drink the sight in.

(Hinata wonders what _he_ sees.)

“Oh, c’mon, no need to thank me now. You weren’t too bad yourself.” The corner of his mouth is curled into a smirk, only just perceivable, and Hinata can’t help the heat that flares up again, tugging at the base of him. Atsumu basks in the afterglow like few can. To be fair, it was very good sex.

“I wouldn’t think so,” he informs him lightly, “given how many times you -” 

“Ah, well, what would you expect? You surprised me, Shouyou. I didn’t know you had it in you.”

Hinata can’t help but smile at this, more knowing than he should be. He spent two years in Brazil, learning how to make love to strangers. He shared a thousand kisses. He bedded a king.

“There you go again, underestimating me.”

“I could never underestimate you.”

Ah, well. He supposes not.

“You said something, the other day. About -” Hinata can’t bring himself to say it - “about high school. What did you mean by it?” 

He doesn’t dare say his name now, not here. Hinata has enough tact for that, at least. Atsumu levels his gaze at him, serious now. Hinata holds his breath.

“On the court, Shouyou, you’re like - you’re like a miracle. I don’t know where you came from,” Atsumu starts, and Hinata has so many answers for him ( _I came from the concrete, from the sky, from the mountains, from the beaches of Brazil, from something that Tobio Kageyama awoke back in Miyagi; I’m an amalgamation, I’m a sum of - of -_ ) but can’t bring himself to offer any of them, “but I didn’t - I don’t want you to go back. I don’t think you do, either. If you can, ah, if you know what I mean.” 

You can’t afford to, is what Atsumu means. You’re too bright, too hot, and you’re burning through us like a comet. It’s too late for us now, it’s together or not at all. 

Something in Hinata shivers and awakens, tells him to pay attention to this. This is important.

“At the top of our game, we’re going to be unbeatable,” Atsumu vows, something dark and beautiful sweeping over his brow, and in this moment he looks magnificent, like he is cut out of marble.

“You’re -” Hinata cuts himself off, his mouth open and catching on something that Atsumu cannot fathom. The word has been building for a while, settling in the palms of his hands and grating against his ribcage, groping around blindly for his heart, and Hinata’s never been good at ignoring things, but he is phenomenal at wrestling with himself; and so it seems that denial and awareness have come to a trembling standstill.

“I’m what?”

“You’re incredible,” Hinata finishes lamely, flushing, but Atsumu seems satisfied with his answer nonetheless, grinning ear-to-ear in such a way that would look ridiculous on someone else, but only serves to accentuate the fact that he’s still irritatingly, undeniably handsome, even after all of this.

“Yeah? You think so?”

“Yeah,” he agrees numbly, and lets Atsumu press him into the sheets again, mouthing hungrily at his throat.

He’s pressed flat against the bed, pressed slick against an Atsumu who is hell-hot and determined to imprint himself onto Hinata’s body, maybe even his soul. The room swells with their breath, raggedly torn between their mouths, _in_ and _out_ and _in_ and _out_ , and groans ripped involuntarily from his throat and into the open air. He opens his legs wider, giving him easier access, and clings to a body in the dark, burning under his skin.

The entire time, he doesn’t speak. He doesn’t dare.

 _Invincible,_ he was going to say. With me, you’re invincible.   
  


* * *

“So, you and Oikawa, huh?” Atsumu peers knowingly over Hinata’s shoulder, catching a glimpse of text conversation. Hinata hastily scrolls up. 

“Shut up. Who told you that? No one knows that. Now come on, we need to practice.”

“Hey, whoah, slow down, what do you think I know about?” He grins like a shark, and Hinata gives him a long, hard look before he relents, hands up in surrender. “Okay, it was just a guess. That selfie got a lot of reblogs, you know.”

“Yeah, two years ago.”

“I don’t blame you,” he shrugs, “I guess we’ve all got to live in the moment, don’t we?”

“I thought you lived for practice,” Hinata says coolly, “what’s stopping you now?”

“What’s got you so pent-up, Shouyou-kun? I’ve got a handle on things. Do you?”

“Get a handle on the ball, and let’s get moving.”

“I could’ve used your hands on my balls this morning -”

Hinata reaches up to smack the back of his head, _whap._

_“Hey!”_

* * *

A conversation on the street:

“Brazil? What’s in Brazil?”

“Sand, I guess. Beach volleyball.”

“ _Beach volleyball?_ Are you stupid? That’s a completely different sport!”

Hinata wrinkles his nose, indignant, like a little cat. “It’s not so different,” he argues. “A lot of players switch to beach volleyball, just for a while, and when they come back, they’re different. I need that. I need to be better.” I need something different, is what he doesn’t say. “When I come back, I’ll meet you again. That’s what we said, right? You and me, the top of the world.” 

“You’re telling me this now?”

“Better now than never.”

“But _why?”_ is what he settles on, desperately. Why can’t you stay here, right where I want you, is what he means.

“I wanna go somewhere, Kageyama. I - I can’t just stay here, forever. I won’t. And neither will you, so - so of course I’m gonna go somewhere.”

“What, it isn’t big enough for you here?”

“No.”

What Hinata means is that he needs this more than Kageyama needs him, and it doesn’t have to be goodbye, not a real one, because they’ll always have Miyagi, and it’s not like he’ll be dead, so they’ll still talk and everything, but Kageyama doesn’t see it that way. Hinata is Karasuno, Hinata is walking home together and not eating lunch alone and watching the morning sky bleed into the mountains and going to Nationals and Hinata is volleyball and larger than life. 

When Shouyou tells him that he’s leaving, he realizes that this place was never going to contain him forever.

* * *

Bokuto, for once in his life, is minding his own business. At least, he’s trying to, but his curiosity gets the better of him, and against his better (questionable) judgment, he strides into the locker room, banging the door open, without taking any sort of precaution. Well, he asked for it.

“Hey, hey, _hey,_ what’s all this racket - _oh -_ WHAT THE FUCK. Not my _eyes,_ holy shit -”

“Get out!” The glare Atsumu settles at their outside hitter half-convinces Hinata that if he tried, he could kill him with his eyes alone. 

More teammates shuffle in, lured by Bokuto’s strangled screaming, only to stop at the doorway and peer in, as if the entrance is plastered in yellow tape. _CRIME SCENE - DO NOT CROSS._ Hinata concedes that Atsumu cannot, indeed, murder anyone at this point, which is a real shame. Right now, Hinata kind of wants to kill himself.

“ME? I’m just trying to change! _You_ get out!”

“Well, we’re busy -”

“We can all see that.”

“It’s occupied right now.”

“It doesn’t work like that.”

“Hinata!” Bokuto calls out, hand clapped over his eyes, “Are you okay? Is the brute hurting you?”

“I’m...fine.”

“He was more than fine a few minutes ago,” Atsumu huffs. Hinata clenches up, and he hisses. Serves him right.

“GET OUT!”

“You can’t just tell us to get out, this is our locker room, too.”

“Fine! Then get - get _out_ _of_ _him!_ ”

“Ew, gross.”

“I’m not the one having sex in the locker room!”

“Yeah, you wish.”

“No, I don’t. I wish you would put some clothes on and express your - your exhibitionist tendencies somewhere else. I - I change here! Now I’m never going to be able to take my clothes off in here ever again without remembering you two _doing it_ like horny rabbits against the lockers.”

“Is that _my_ locker?” Sakusa whispers from behind him, quietly devastated. 

“You’re welcome.”

“I am so sorry, Omi-chan.”

“Gross, don’t say his name while I’m in you. Especially with honorifics.”

“After this, Atsumu, you’re dead.”

“You need a starting setter. You can’t replace me.”

“I hope Hinata takes you home and eats your head, like a praying mantis.”

“Why am I the girl in this scenario?”

“I mean, you are the one getting -”

“Hey, don’t point at -”

“At this point, if you don’t want to see anything else you don’t want to see, you should just stop asking me to pull out, because -”

“You can still keep it up? We’re right here, bro. We’re all staring at you.”

“I know.”

“...”

“Ew.”

“Hey, guys, Coach wants to know what the holdup is, because he - oh my god, what the hell.”

“Is he still asking?”

“Just get _out of him!_ ” Bokuto wails.

“Are you asking nicely?”

“I DIDN’T ASK FOR THIS!”

 _“GET OUT!”_ Hinata shrieks, to which the group gladly adheres, with the exception of Bokoto, who remains in a state of shock, red in the face. When he opens his mouth again, Hinata blindly gropes into the open locker nearest to him, seizes his water bottle, and chucks it as hard as he can into the doorway.

It clatters loudly against the doorframe, hollow metal against metal, and when Bokoto screeches, “I’M GOING, I’M GOING!” and proceeds to get gone, Hinata can finally sag forward against the bench, forearms aching, in relief.

Atsumu has the good grace to wait for one good, long moment, tapping his fingers against the bench seat, before asking,

“So, shall we pick up where we left off?”

_Smack._

“Ow!”

* * *

“What did you mean, when we first met?” Hinata sends the ball his way, and Atsumu lunges to the side to receive it.

“Hm?” he grunts, and the ball spirals over the net. Instinctively, Hinata takes a few steps backward, bracing himself.

“You asked me if I remembered you.” Hinata frowns, remembering his own vibrant high school career. “We played against you, I know that, but...I don’t know. You seemed kinda upset after I told you I didn’t.” The ball hits his forearms with a resounding _smack_ and soars back to Atsumu, who reaches out to catch it with one hand, balancing it in a curved palm before wedging it snugly between his arm and his hip.

“It ain’t your fault,” Miya shrugs. “I was young, angry. I just lost a match.”

“And?”

“And you inspired me. Your quick was impossible - I’d never seen anything like it. Neither has anyone else.”

“Didn’t you replicate it immediately after, with no practice?” Hinata grins, credit where credit is due.

“Nah, not really. I’d been training with Osamu for my entire life. We were partners.”

“Just like me and Kageyama.”

“Not exactly,” he shoots him a side eye. “But something like that. You knew each other for what, a year? More or less? That was...remarkable, Shouyou. On the other side of the net, you’re scary. A spike like that means trust. It means knowing. It’s not the same for any two players. You know that. After the match, after we lost, I said, ‘Shouyou-kun, one day, I'm gonna set for you’,” he grins, cat-like, “and I was right, wasn’t I?” He laughs, and Hinata goes quiet for a while, thinking.

“Miya?”

“Yes, dear?”

”I’m glad you were right.”

“Mm. Shouyou?”

”Yes?”

“What would you do, if you couldn’t play volleyball?”

“I don’t know.”

“Neither do I,” Atsumu confides, like it’s a secret, and this time, when he laughs, Hinata joins in, amazed.

* * *

Hinata is seventeen years old, and his own house is too far away. He’s shivering on Kageyama’s doorstep, tugging on his sleeve, when the thought strikes him.

“Why are they never home?” Hinata asks out of curiosity, blinking rainwater out of his eyes. The top of his head is soaked, and his hair is plastered down by the rain; it’s dribbling down his forehead and over the bridge of his nose, but he doesn’t even think to brush his hair back. “You’ve met my mom, and my sister. I feel like I've never met your parents. I know they exist, though.”

He and Kageyama were racing, as usual, when the sky turned an angry gray and began to weep in earnest, and it was only when the clouds began to shift and turn dark that Kageyama reached out to snag his wrist, dragging him down a back road and towards the closer of their houses.

When they’d arrived, the door was locked tight, and the windows were dark, gaping things. The lights are always off when Hinata visits; he’ll follow Kageyama through the living room and up the stairs as he flips on the light switch ahead of him, waking up the rooms as they go along. There’s something distantly sad about it, Hinata thinks. The house is big, bigger than his, and always clean, but sometimes it feels so empty inside. Barren. Hollow.

Kageyama turns away from him to fit the key into the lock. “I told you,” he says evenly, “my mom is overseas right now.” His hair is wet, too, slicked down and shiny against his face.

“But what about your dad?”

“He’s at work. He’s always at work,” Kageyama repeats dully. It’s not even resigned, it’s a simple statement, a fact: All fathers are absent, say Kageyama’s empty eyes. 

Hinata doesn’t know why, but he reaches out to take his hand. It’s cold, and from this distance he can faintly hear Kageyama’s teeth chattering, sliding against each other, _click, clack._ His skin is cold, as cold as Hinata’s. Kageyama hesitates, but doesn’t pull his hand away. His other hand is still twisted around the key. The front door is halfway open already, a mouth to the darkness of the house, but he makes no move to go in. All around them, the rain pours.

_I’m sorry._

_It’s okay._

Mine is dead, is what Hinata doesn’t say, but he was never absent.

Hinata squeezes his hand, and brushes past him, over the threshold. Kageyama follows, and locks the door behind them.

* * *

Okay, so here’s where we’re at so far. Pay attention:

Atsumu is in love with Shouyou. Someone else is also in love with Shouyou. The world will keep spinning for an eternity or so, until it doesn’t, at which point, it won’t matter. Shouyou is in love with - well, at this point, it doesn’t really matter, either. 

Shouyou doesn’t read romance novels, or any of that crap. He likes action anime - _Naruto_ , _Dragon Ball Z,_ that sort of thing. That’s not to say that there is no romance in either of those: _Naruto_ is, functionally, a love story between two boys who, by all logic, should hate each other but just can’t commit to that, so really, in the end, they commit to each other. It’s very obvious. Still, to some viewers, it’s all in the subtext. Hinata can read in Portuguese, Spanish, English, and Japanese now, but somehow subtext will always escape him. 

Atsumu, on the other hand, has a solid grasp on both subtext and irony, despite not reading many romance novels himself. Hinata’s not the swooning damsel who is perpetually caught unaware of her suitor’s advances (first of all, Hinata’s an athlete. He doesn’t swoon. Secondly, he’s aware of most of them, he just doesn’t know what to do), but between the two of them, Atsumu has taken it upon himself to assess the situation with his - shall we say - rather wonderful analytical skills. 

Hm, he thinks. Alright. So that’s how it is. That is - disappointing, but he can work with that.

If he can’t have all of Hinata, he’ll love him in halves. He gets one half, and the other half will go to - well, that’s up to Hinata to decide.

Atsumu Miya saunters over, props an elbow over Shouyou’s shoulder, and lowers his eyelids, casting a look that seems perpetually unimpressed but Kageyama can decipher as something else. "Tobio-kun. Would ya’ mind not picking a fight with _my_ wing spiker, hmmm?"

Kageyama kind of wants to hit something. The ball, into the opposite court, first and foremost - if not, then the ball directly into Atsumu Miya’s smug face would be a decent consolation prize.

“I didn’t pick one with him. _He_ picked one with _me_.” Kageyama makes sure to emphasize that second part, and takes satisfaction in seeing his handsome face twitch in annoyance. 

_Adlers, one. Jackals, zero._

Here’s the thing about the game: it’s the adrenaline rush, the savage joy and the boiling blood that sets his heart pounding with a giddy, animalistic glee that strips back his layers and exposes him to the court, to the bone. Hinata has been told that he is a ball of boundless energy, of pure athleticism and will, and all he needs to do is concentrate.

Across the net stand giants, a lot of them. Nicolas Romero, to name one. Tobio Kageyama, Kōrai Hoshiumk, Tatsuto Sokolov. There, that’s three. 

Hinata’s not snarling, but he is something inhuman, more or less, instinct and practice learned in his joints. When the whistle blows, he’ll be up on his feet, faster than the eyes can see, up in the air. This is the fight and the flight, two birds killed by one stone. This is going to be fun.

The gymnasium lights glare white hot, searing their reflections into the wax polish of the floor, glowing like the sun. 

You were a crow, once.

Now what? What are you, Shouyou?

The spectators roar their resounding response, throbbing in his chest. 

_MSBY_ , they scream. _JACKALS. JACKALS._

Hinata has confronted giants before.

Once, when he was sixteen, he stood toe to toe with a giant that towered over him by twenty-seven centimeters.

 _I’m Hinata Shouyou, from the concrete,_ Hinata had said to the giant, and meant it. Hinata says what he believes, because it burns its way through him like fire, through the day, through the night, and through the morning. Sometimes it comes out like a war cry, like _liberty or death,_ but sometimes it comes out like truth, as if _knowing_ is _being_ through transitive property.

He thinks of sidewalk cracks and green-stemmed weeds stubbornly peeking up and out of the ground, wedged between two hard places, wholly unwelcome but still fighting hard to reach the sun. He thinks of the earth shrinking below him in one _whoosh_ of movement, of the fabric of Kageyama’s jersey clenched in his fist, of the _smack_ of a volleyball against the ground before it rebounds, up, up and anywhere.

 _I’m going to beat you, and go to nationals,_ he’d said. To Ushijima, it is a throwaway comment that boasts three things: naïveté, arrogance, and hope.

How foolish.

For Hinata, and maybe even Tobio, it rings clear and clandestine in its truth.

It’s the truth, after all. The concrete is where barren things learn to grow.

He catches a glimpse of Kageyama’s face beyond the net, and for a second, something familiar in his chest stutters, because he’s here, in the flesh. He doesn’t know who reaches out first - maybe it’s both of them - but their hands find each other from across the line, and they grasp together like a challenge. A promise. 

Tobio’s face is close. Really close. The spectators are screaming. He wonders why.

If Hinata was a romantic, a real one, he’d call it ivory, but in truth, Tobio’s face is a white shock, slack in disbelief and something untouchable.

For one, brief, impossible moment, it looks like grief. He looks sick with it.

When Kageyama Tobio was a teenager, all those years ago, the King of the Court, he’d turned to Hinata and asked him, _what does it take to conquer the world?_

It’s 2018, and Hinata answers: _what does it take to fly?_

On his right, Atsumu prepares himself. First things first, he thinks, we gotta make sure we say a proper hello.

He gives a piece of himself to the ball, and sends it into the air. 

Hinata surges up to meet him halfway.

Stupid sand, Kageyama thinks reproachfully when Hinata defies gravity and the quick slams itself onto the floor with the velocity of an incoming bullet.

Hinata flashes him a smile from the other side, beatific. All around them, the stands are screaming themselves hoarse, because this is what they came to see. Next to him, Miya Atsumu looks like he could piss himself, he’s so smug.

 _God,_ Kageyama thinks, _I hate sand._

* * *

“Hey, I thought that guy looked familiar. Is it me...?” The World’s Ace, Nicolas Romero, is in awe. “Or is that Ninja Shouyou?” Romero whispers, pointing a finger over his own shoulder.

Kageyama freezes, and next to him, Ushijima blinks, a gesture that, for him, is plenty expressive. Romero misunderstands their blank stares. 

“What? You haven’t heard of Ninja Shouyou? How do you not know him when you’re Japanese?” he exclaims, and Kageyama fights the urge to roll his eyes. “My son is saying he wants to play beach volleyball now, all because he watched him on TV!” Romero confides then, and something in Kageyama bristles with pride and envy and an old possessiveness he thought he’d killed after high school. Ushijima’s eyes flit over to him, just for a second, and Kageyama ignores him, but clings to a few select words: _Japanese,_ _ninja,_ _beach,_ and _Shouyou._

“By ninja, do you mean that last dig of his?”

“Tobio, you noticed it too?” Romero asks, excited, and internally, Kageyama glowers, because that’s Hinata Shouyou, the Decoy of Karasuno. 

He texts him at least three times a week, and FaceTimes once a month. 

When he was sixteen, he fell in love with him and never stopped - not that he’ll ever tell him. He had his first sleepover at his house, on a borrowed mattress on the floor of his bedroom. 

He’s his third emergency contact - not that he’ll ever tell him - which, in actuality, is impractical because they’re not family, and they don’t even live together (for the past two years, they haven’t even been in the same country, much less the same page), but if something happened to him, selfishly, he’d want Hinata to know, wherever he was.

Hinata is his first partner, his best friend, and his greatest rival. He hasn’t seen him in years, and now he’s just across a net, better than he ever was.

Of course he’s noticed.

He’s not the only one, though, and Kageyama is not so selfish as to ignore the fact that Hinata is here with him, finally, on the world stage, where he belongs. Of course, eyes that aren’t his own will be glued on his back: the Jackal’s number twenty-one is a miracle to be reckoned with, to be feared and admired in equal parts.

The fact, then, that Nicolas Romero recognizes him for what he is (what the world will see him as) has Kageyama gritting his teeth - in a grimace or a smile, he can’t decide. 

Even across the world, it seems, Hinata’s a force of nature. 

Not that he needs to tell him.

* * *

Okay. It’s time for another brief intermission:

Summer is almost here. Summer means separation, means cicadas singing in the trees, means ice cream smearing sweet and sticky down wrists, means peeling sunburn, means trips to the lake, means graduation. Summer means a lot of painful things, but the key word here is _almost._ It’s not here yet, which is the important thing. Practice is over - for the day - and Daichi is ready to pack up and head home when he feels a gentle tap on the back of his neck. He turns and gets an eyeful of ash blond hair and an innocent expression that immediately sets him on edge.

“Hinata has a question,” Suga informs him innocently, one hand firmly planted on Hinata’s shoulder. There’s something just a little off about the image - Daichi can’t put his finger on it. Hinata looks a little too worried. Suga looks a little too thrilled.

“A question?” He can’t help but be weary, especially when Suga practically shoves Hinata towards him. 

“Ah, I thought it might be best for you to explain it to him, Daichi.” His fellow upperclassman shoots him a smile that is perfectly angelic, spun out of sugar. Nothing out of the ordinary here. “I’ll see you at the gate,” he adds, and briskly turns away, heading for the doors of the gym at a pace that borderlines on a jog. Daichi watches him go with a frown. Suspicious, he thinks, but his attention is suddenly pulled back to Hinata, who is twisting the hem of his shirt, looking discreetly uncomfortable.

“Alright,” he cautions. “What seems to be the problem?”

“Nothing, I just - I just had a question.”

“About...volleyball?”

“No,” Hinata admits, a first for him, “about what happened this week, with that other boy who wouldn’t give my ball back when it rolled into the street. I was walking home, and I dropped it, and he picked it up and started waving it around, so then _I_ started yelling, and I kept asking him to give it back, and he then said, ‘blow me, shorty’, and threw the ball into a ditch.”

“Oh, man. Let me guess, that’s why Kageyama came in with a black eye, right?” Daichi almost chuckles - he imagines Kageyama’s face morphing from disgruntled to pissed to _furious_ in the blink of an eye, and the horror of the other boy’s face upon realizing that he had messed with the wrong kid. 

_“He said, ‘blow me, shorty’...”_

Yeah, that would do it. He’ll have to have a talk with him later about the downsides of fighting even off of school grounds, about the integrity of the club and setting a good example for others, but for now, Daichi thinks he understands.

“Yeah…”

“So, what’s the confusion?”

“Well, the entire conversation confused me, to be honest. Kageyama wouldn't explain it to me, I tried asking Tsukishima about it, but now I’m even more confused.” Daichi wracks his brain. “Daichi?”

“Yes, Hinata?” 

“What’s fellatio?” Hinata asks with a perfectly straight face, and Daichi can suddenly identify Suga’s carefully composed expression from earlier.

“Oh, dear god.” Suga, you bastard. From around the corner, he can almost swear he hears a giggle. _God can’t hear you._

“Asahi, get over here.”

“Captain?” The third-year edges closer. He has that look in his eye, that look that animals get when they know they are going to die. Daichi sighs, and pinches the bridge of his nose between his forefinger and thumb. He’s seen his own father do the same. Oh, god, he’s becoming an old man already. He knows that he’s a coward, at least.

“I’ve got to meet Suga at the gate. Could you, uh, help explain something to Hinata, here?” Daichi demands. It’s not a question. “It’ll be real quick, and then...then you can go.” Asahi gulps, Hinata shifts from one foot to another, and Daichi flees the scene.

The withering look Suga gives him - _captain, my ass -_ when he arrives is almost enough to cow him into regretting the decision. Almost.   
  


* * *

What have we learned?

Okay, three things, at least - the first thing being that Kageyama is protective, when he wants to be. Kageyama, who regularly deals in emotional repression and would rather not deal with people in general, gets himself into a fight when he is fifteen because someone who was not him threatened Hinata, and that shit does not sit right with him. Sure, he gets a black eye for his troubles, but have you seen the other guy? I have. His nose was broken, last time I checked.

Secondly, Suga can be evil when he wants to be, a fact that Daichi can appreciate. Sometimes.

Thirdly, Daichi is the team Dad, but he’d rather bite off his own thumbs than initiate a sex talk with any of the underclassmen. That’s what Asahi is for, anyway, to do the dirty work that Mom makes Dad do.

That’s all very nice. But what do we know? Three more things, at least.

Hinata’s sexual naïveté will not last. Kageyama is possessive, and hurt, like a caged animal that’s been kicked one too many times. Suga, once intoxicated, will not shut up. 

As per usual, Daichi will suffer because of it.

* * *

“And to think, he’s grown up so much,” Suga is saying weepily into Daichi’s shoulder, “I’m so proud.” Karasuno’s former captain only nods in agreement, smiling at Suga’s open display of affection. It’s befitting, perhaps, of the nature of the reunion - the crows of Karasuno, gathered together in Japan for the first time in years. It’s worth flying out for.

Although he rarely drinks, Suga is hardly a lightweight, and it is an anomaly that tonight, of all nights, he’s had one drink more than he’s accustomed to. His limbs are loose, and, unfortunately, so is his tongue. He continues, more brazenly than Daichi would have expected - “First he’s off having Brazilian flings with Oikawa, then he’s the secret weapon of a V-League Division 1 team. What is he going to do next, I wonder….” The last bit he murmurs into Daichi’s side, muffled enough that it could have been mercifully ignored, but his voice manages to carry even through the gentle din, and on his other side, Kageyama’s head snaps up with enough force to crack his neck. 

“Wait, what?” Kageyama croaks. His eyes are wide, and he swivels to face Suga. “What did you say?” he repeats, so quiet, it could be a whisper.

A heavy, deadly quiet falls over the table. A combination of teams, friends and acquaintances, exchange glances. Suga squirms. “I - ah, I didn’t -” he stumbles over his words, knotting his fingers together in a gesture that looks faintly like a prayer. “Nothing. Just that I’m proud of how far Hinata’s come.” Next to him, Daichi winces at the wording.

“He said that Oikawa and Hinata slept together, in Brazil.” Tsukishima clarifies from the adjacent table, sounding bored, but the glint in his eye betrays his amusement. Yamaguchi nudges him, making broad cutting motions across his own neck with his hand. _Abort. Abort._

“What the fuck,” Kageyama says, and Suga shakes his head slowly, looking guilty.

“I heard it from Tanaka,” he tells him, somewhat apologetically, and the mentioned man shoots him a look of betrayal. Kageyama turns to Tanaka, leveling a glare on him instead.

“What the fuck,” Kageyama says. Tanaka freezes.

“Ask Hinata,” he blurts. “I have nothing to do with this.” 

Kageyama excuses himself. Then, he calls Hinata. Shouyou answers on the second ring. “Hello? Oh, hey! Is everyone there? I’m sorry that I couldn’t make it, but -” 

“What the fuck,” says Kageyama.

“Excuse me?”

Then, another voice that is definitely not Hinata joins in, “Who is that?” It’s fainter, a background noise, but Kageyama, being very observant, can just pick up on it.

“It’s - ah, it’s an old friend.” There’s Hinata again, a little quieter, as if he’s angling his phone away. Kageyama can be very astute. He listens closely.

“A rude one, apparently.”

“Yeah.”

“Didn’t you say your friends were in town? I thought you were meeting up with them in the morning?”

“Afternoon, actually. Now, shh, I’m on the phone.”

Then, “Ah, it’s Tobio-kun. What a surprise.” 

Kageyama hangs up.

* * *

Kageyama is his first setter. His first rival. His first partner. His first - his first something. 

Once, when Tobio is seventeen, in an empty gymnasium, Hinata tells him that he'll stay with him forever, or something like that, until he is dead. He goes home that night and lays awake for hours, turning it over and over in his head.

That means something. That has to mean something.

Doesn’t it?

* * *

Tobio is twenty-one years old, and he does not believe in ghosts.

His grandfather is long dead, but before that, he was alive, and very kind.

 _"You know, Tobio,”_ he’d once said, _“If you get really, really good, you'll get to play lots more games. The best players get to play lots and lots of volleyball. If you get really good, I promise you...somebody who's even better will come along and find you."_

Tobio does not believe in ghosts, but he does believe in hauntings. Occasionally, the words will come back to follow him, to linger, and he’ll believe them, even if just for a moment.

For the longest time, Kageyama knew that somebody was Hinata Shouyou. He doesn’t know how he knew, but he knew it in an abstract way, in the way that a child, once old enough, is certain that an absent father will not return home, or that a soldier, once experienced enough, knows that he will not go home at all. He knows because Hinata promised it to him once, told him that he’d be with him at the top of the world, and he believed him, because Hinata does not lie. It is in his nature. He only speaks the truth.

His grandfather never met Hinata. He would’ve liked to introduce them. He wonders if his grandfather would have known, too, if he would have seen Hinata and the way that Tobio looked at him, and then asked with knowing eyes, ah, who is this?

Tobio might have said, this is Hinata Shouyou. He’s the boy from the concrete, the boy who grew wings.

Atsumu’s apartment is bigger than any apartment Hinata’s ever rented - his place in Brazil could easily fit thrice into the space Atsumu has made for himself. What’s even more miraculous is that he doesn’t have a roommate. Of course, without a roommate, he seems to have developed a penchant for walking around naked, something that Hinata - and likely the neighbors, depending on the hour - can appreciate. 

When Hinata wakes, all loose-limbed and lazily content, he stretches and rubs the sleep from his eyes only to realize that the bedside next to him is empty, spare for the indent on the pillow. Then a flash of color catches his eye, and he creeps forward onto the end of the bed, craning his neck to see Atsumu on the terrace overlooking the five stories.

In the morning light, he is a nude Adonis, all muscle and ideal proportions hand-chiseled by an artisan. Hinata’s most vivid memories of Atsumu are the ones in the dark, with only the backlight of his shadow against a sliver of moonlight, a black silhouette in his bed.

He doesn’t think he’s ever seen him like this.

Hinata tugs on a shirt - it could belong to him or Miya, but from the way the neckline nearly slips over one shoulder, he guesses it’s the latter - and pads out to join him on the balcony, slinging an arm around his waist. 

The streets below are empty. The city is not yet awake, and for now, he and Atsumu are the only two creatures on the earth, leaning against each other in the silence. He leans slightly over the edge, inhaling the morning air.

_Wait, dumbass._

_What?_

_It’s only been three years, you know. It felt like longer. I wanted you to stay._

_Tobio, that’s not fair._

_Just - just wait. Please. I thought you were going to wait._

_What?_

_We were gonna wait. Right?_

_~~You went to the Olympics without me.~~ You can’t tell me to wait, not now. _

Fair enough.

* * *

One conversation on a balcony:

“You know, Shouyou, I won’t be mad.”

“Huh?”

“If my brother came back to the game,” Atsumu says carefully, spelling it out, “even after all this time, I’d jump at the chance.” Hinata looks as if he can’t quite believe what he’s hearing. Atsumu can hardly believe it, either.

“It’s not the same thing.”

“It’s really not,” he agrees, “but I was hoping that you’d at least learn _something_ from me after all this time.”

* * *

[ dumbass shouyou ]

6: 10 am

Do you want to meet up for coffee

Sure! 

When

_[6:14 am]_

3 hours 

Down the street

the one with the brick walls. Painted green

See u then

_[6:18 am]_

* * *

Hinata doesn’t really drink coffee. He’s hyperactive enough on a good day, and he’s found from experience that the addition of excess caffeine or sugar has the potential to get him bouncing off the walls. Kageyama knows this, so why he’d want to get coffee into him is anyone’s guess. Maybe he’s still upset from last night. Maybe he’s trying to poison him.

Or, maybe, it’s the first olive branch that Tobio could think of. No one ever said Tobio wasn’t dumber than bricks. The line here is unreasonably long, and Hinata took one look at it before beelining to an empty table. At least the atmosphere is nice - despite the overabundance of customers, it’s reasonably quiet. Music plays dimly in the background, something gentle and unassuming. On another day, he’d find it calming, but today is not that day. “Stupid Kageyama,” Hinata mutters to himself, “making me nervous. Ass. I bet it’s on purpose.”

“Excuse me?”

He looks up. Speak of the devil, and he’s here, looking irritated. Or confused. With Kageyama, those two things kind of go hand in hand. Speaking of which, he’s holding two cups and cradling a small paper bag in one arm. Kageyama doesn’t like scones, especially the cheap ones from coffee chains. He bought Hinata coffee and a pastry - how considerate, Tobio - and now he’s glaring at Hinata because he hasn’t sat down yet. 

He’s too busy staring. 

The first thing he thinks is _he combs his hair differently_. He’d seen it yesterday, during the match, and before that, even, but with Kageyama standing only a table’s length away from him, it’s different. He can’t make fun of it now - it’s not the right time, and besides, he looks handsome.

“I got you -” he brusquely shoves the paper cup at him - “hot chocolate. And one of those pastries from the window. If you’re hungry.” Hinata takes the bag and sits.

“Thanks, Kageyama.”

“Hinata.”

“That’s me,” Hinata looks up. Kageyama is still standing, stiff as a board, but the look on his face feels very familiar, if not strange. He straightens up. Pay attention to this. It’s important.

“I’m sorry about last night.”

“What are you apologizing for?” Hinata asks, not to excuse him, but because he wants to know.

“You were gone for awhile. It - it made me nervous, I think,” Kageyama offers as explanation. “And - I don’t really know you. Your friends, I mean. I don’t know anymore. You were gone.” He clears his throat, and it’s a mutual comfort that neither of them have the courage to acknowledge the ghosts in the room. Then again, they don’t really need to. They’re looking right at each other.

“I’m here now.”

“I’m glad. I’m sorry. I just - I just don’t want to wait anymore.”

The two regard each other.

“Hinata, I - I never - even in high school, you were - I -”

“It’s okay. You don’t have to say it.”

“Alright.”

“The team’s outside already.” Hinata jabs a thumb at the window next to them - across the glass, Nishinoya is making faces at them, while Asahi covers his own face. “We should go. I hope they don’t expect us to buy them all coffee, too. I wonder how they found us?”

“Small world, I guess?” Tobio says, a small smile breaking across his face. It’s like clouds parting.

 _Nah,_ he thinks, _it’s pretty big_ , and stands up, reaches across the space to take Kageyama’s hand. He doesn’t startle this time, not like all those years ago, but instead relaxes into it and leads him out, palm-to-palm, to greet their friends.

They venture into the world, and the sunlight paints them gold.

* * *

  
  


_Here’s the story. Pay attention:_

Hinata Shouyou is twenty, and he wakes up in Brazil, in a bed that is not his own. Beside him, someone else is tangled up in the sheets, boneless and dreamless and dead to the world. 

Hinata is not.

Somewhere across the globe, Kageyama Tobio cracks one eye open, curls inward and yanks his covers up to his chin, savoring the lonely minutes that stretch between waking and his alarm. Outside, the sun toils in the horizon, biding its time.

Day has arrived.

Together, they’ll drag themselves, bare-knuckled and bone-weary, out of bed and into the morning light.

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The working music for this piece was [You’re Somebody Else](https://youtu.be/qVdPh2cBTN0) by Flora Cash.  
>    
> ...  
>  _It’s like you told me  
>  Go forward slowly  
> It’s not a race to the end_  
>   
>  _Well you look like yourself  
>  But you're somebody else  
> Only it ain't on the surface  
> Well you talk like yourself  
> No, I hear someone else though  
> Now you're making me nervous _
> 
> If you got this far, thank you so much for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it!  
> I originally planned for Hinata to end up with Atsumu, but thematically it didn’t work for me, and Kagehina was just calling out to me. I was considering doing a follow-up from an outside POV (Osamu, Oikawa, or Pedro, maybe?) but we’ll see about that. Also, I’ve never written a sex scene before, or barely a kissing scene, so this was, very new for me lmao.
> 
> Kudo if you enjoyed or would like to see more!  
> I try to read and respond to every comment, and I’d love to read your feedback. ♡


	2. pitch black flesh and bone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> part two, ft. the culinary art of falling in love, gratuitous references to _The Old Man and the Sea_ , and a recipe for halfway decent miso soup

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Haikyuu ended, but, as is the way of things, it’s not over and it’ll never be over. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, and goodnight._

When Atsumu was a little kid, he had a shadow that didn’t go away. 

He knew then that it was separate from him, and he was not lonely enough to mistake it for his own, but he loved it nonetheless, because he knew that it was his brother.

Atsumu knows volleyball because it has imprinted itself on the palms of his hands and then some, and so he knows a hunger that eats away at him, that chews him up and spits him out, has him starving for more. When he eats, it is because practice has made his appetite ferocious. When he sleeps, it is because the game has seared weariness into his bones, and when he steps onto the court, Osamu is right next to him, aligned like clockwork. When the ball smacks into the gymnasium floor, there is always an echo, a twin movement just a beat behind, as if to reassure him that it had been there all along. 

For the longest time, he has two heartbeats, _ba-dum, ba-dum,_ and one chest. The shadow does not leave, and Atsumu does not mind.

One day, seemingly out of the blue, the shadow grows a self, and then it’s just Atsumu and the sun.

* * *

  
Here goes Day One:

“Welcome to the team, Shouyou-kun,” Atsumu tells him, and smiles as handsomely as he can. He wonders if anyone else can see how transparent he is, how his heart is beating a staccato rhythm against the inside of his chest. Six years ago, Hinata was a figment of Atsumu’s imagination, a figure moving in the dark, fast and quick and immortalized in the glow of the television screen that cast shapes against his bedroom walls. Six years later, it is today, and Hinata is a little stronger, and a little darker. Without Kageyama Tobio glowering behind him, he even looks a little taller. “Do you remember me?”

Hinata’s face shutters into polite confusion. “Should I?” he asks, puzzled, and then something in his chest strains and snaps with disappointment, and Atsumu remembers storming away like a spurned child, leaving Hinata to gape after him.

Day Two:

Atsumu remembers seeing Hinata jump for the first time, the way his eyes widened and reflected circles of light, honing in on something too far and too fast for those on the ground to see. Years later, his brain has rendered the memory in perfect, grotesque detail, like a tape caught on a loop.

“Let me set for you.”

“Good morning, Atsumu.”

“Yeah, yeah, good morning. Set for me, Shouyou.” The look on Hinata’s face is not encouraging, and he sighs. “I am one of the best setters in the nation. You haven’t played with an actual setter in - what - years? I can make all of your wet volleyball dreams come true. I wanna set for you.”

“How about we set some boundaries first?” Hinata leans away with a frown. Atsumu leans forward.

“Sure. Then will you spike for me?”

“Have you always been like this?”

“Of course not. I was much worse in senior high. You wouldn’t have liked me back then.”

“I don’t even like you now,” Hinata says expressively. Atsumu blinks. Okay, fair enough. 

“We can change that.”

“I can’t wait,” Hinata says, sounding oddly sincere. Atsumu holds out a ball, a peace offering. He takes it.

Hinata jumps for him, and it’s a sight to behold. It is something to see, even more something to feel. 

A setter will count each point scored by their spiker as their own, because a setter’s real job is to serve, to get the ball to their partner and believe that they’ll make it. After the ball has left Atsumu’s fingertips, there is a sort of power in him that cannot be contained, a sort of pride that is electric and threads its way up his spine, into his heart, and into his lungs. When his own heels hit the ground, breath leaves him like a prayer, up into the air. Volleyball, it turns out, has an awful lot to do with faith.

When he tossed to Osamu, it was different, Atsumu thinks. He didn’t need to trust him. He _knew_ him, which was just as good - maybe even better - but Atsumu was a student then, and had yet not learned all he could. Faith is a gift, he has come to know. Faith is a golden thing.

Here are the facts: his spiker doesn’t want to spike for him. He doesn’t trust him. He doesn’t even like him, and until that day comes, Shouyou-kun is gonna be spiking for himself alone, and that’s fine (the game hardly runs on altruism alone) but Atsumu would prefer not to compete with someone who’s not even here. Kageyama Tobio is good - the best, even, not that the rankings _mean_ anything - but Hinata is better than that, to be spoiled and ruined by one setter from his childhood.

There is an old proverb about love, about how if you love something, you must set it free, or it’ll come back to bite you in the ass. Atsumu is not superstitious, and therefore doesn’t believe in proverbs; that being said, he’d be happy to let Shouyou bite whatever he wants. Atsumu is pretty much open to anything.

“Let me guess, you’ve been going home alone for the past few weeks.” Atsumu smiles in such a way that’s been described as cheeky. Osamu called it constipated. “Just a guess.” Hinata shoots him a side-eye.

“What makes you say that?” he asks cautiously. It’s early, usually too early for Atsumu to be hopping back on his bullshit already.

“Oh, nothing. I just heard that you were a pretty easy-going guy, so I figured that maybe there was a reason for the massive stick you’ve got shoved up your -”

“Maybe you should stop making assumptions about me.”

“Nonsense, I know plenty about you.”

“Really?”

 _I obsessed over you for a month back in my second year,_ his traitorous brain supplies. “You’re an open book, Shouyou,” Atsumu says instead. Hinata squints like he’s not sure whether or not to believe him. 

“Do you actually want to ask something, or are you just messing with me?”

“Um,” Atsumu says, intelligently. “So, do you like men?”

“What?” Hinata blinks. Time grinds to a halt.

Sakusa, who is conveniently passing by, helpfully adds, “He said, _‘do you like men’_?” Time starts up again, and Atsumu makes a mental note to serve the ball extra hard the next time they’re paired off. 

“I -”

“Warmups,” Atsumu blurts. “We should start those.”

He spins on his heel and heads for the ball cart, hoping that the back of his neck doesn’t look as hot as it feels. Even so, Hinata’s eyes are burning a hole in the nape of it. 

_Asshole._ It’s been a whole five years since high school, but it seems that there are some things he just can’t unlearn.

He knows the facts, but what matters is the truth, and it’s a sad one - Atsumu knows that Shouyou is still in love with Kageyama. He knew it on the third day.

It’s been three years and nearly eleven thousand miles of distance between the two, during which Tobio-kun was holed up in Japan, growing quietly miserable and more dangerous by the day, and Shouyou was growing wings on the beaches of Rio, defying gravity like he was wont to do. If Hinata was gonna flush it out of his system, he would’ve, but he didn’t. There’s not a lot Atsumu can do about it, but there _is_ a lot he _won’t_ do about it - for example, he’s _not_ giving up, because Atsumu is not a quitter, unlike some people he knows, okay? 

Before he knows it, it’s Day Five, and by then Atsumu has reached his boiling point.

 _What did Tobio-kun do,_ Atsumu asks him with his next toss, _to make something like you?_

Hinata answers the question with his left hand, sending the ball crashing into the opposite court with the approximate force of an oncoming train. He may as well have socked Atsumu straight in the chest, for all the air that is punched out of his lungs, for the shock that stops and restarts his heart.

 _Nothing,_ Hinata says with his teeth bared. _I made myself._

To his credit, Bokuto nearly digs it, but it glances off of his forearms and goes wide, rolling out of bounds. He cackles from the floor and shoots a thumbs up at Hinata, who beams back at him, a million-watt.

Finally, Atsumu gathers himself together and speaks.

“What the hell was that?”

“I practiced the left-handed quick in Brazil,” Hinata confides, face flushed in embarrassment and pride. His skin is still tanned from the Rio sun, but his blush shows up anyway. “I wanted to - I wanted to cover all my bases. I’m at my best when I’m unpredictable, I think.” 

“Yeah, no kidding.”

“Do you know Ushijima?”

“I’ve heard of him,” Atsumu manages to say without scoffing. Anyone in volleyball would have to be deaf to have not heard of Ushijima Wakatoshi, the opposite hitter for the Schweiden Adlers. In high school, he was one of the top three aces in the country. His left-handed spikes could shake the earth. 

“I met Oikawa Tooru in Brazil. Happy coincidences. He reminded me of my first year, when we beat Shiratorizawa to get to nationals - up until then, Ushijima was the strongest opponent I’d ever faced, on his own.” _Ushijma_ was the strongest opponent, Atsumu notices, not _Shiratorizawa._ He wonders if there’s a reason for that. “I remembered, his spikes were so strong, even our libero had trouble receiving them, at first. His team counted on him, more than anything, in everything. When I was a first year, I had my spike, and I was fast. I couldn’t read the game, not well, and - well...that was all I had, for a while. I wanted - I wanted to win, so I could keep playing. Then, in my first year, I got sick. Really sick. I collapsed at nationals. I wanted to do everything I could before the ball hit the ground, but I didn’t, because -” _My body betrayed me._ He understands. He was there.

“That’s why you’re an all-rounder.”

“I want to be everything I can be,” Shouyou finishes, eyes gleaming.

They sink into him, and Atsumu understands. _I want to be invincible._

Miya Atsumu is a lot of things: hungry, driven, thoroughly talented, a little mean. He’s gonna fall in love, amongst other things, but he won’t go stupid with it, not giddy with the sensation. He’ll be better than that, he knows, and Shouyou will be, too.

* * *

This is a note from the future you - 

_Do yourself a favor and stop counting the days, yeah?_

* * *

Two of his teammates show up at his apartment uninvited. They knock on the door at exactly twelve o’clock. They’re lucky that Atsumu is wearing boxers; lately, Atsumu has taken to walking around naked, which isn’t strange at all, because it’s _his apartment, goddammit,_ and he is at liberty to do whatever he wants with his own body. 

Atsumu peers through the peephole. Bokuto looks antsy, looking around and over his shoulder, as if his hair isn’t conspicuous enough on its own. Sakusa only stares back through the peephole, as if he can sense Atsumu through the door. 

This creeps him out, and he lets them in at a quarter past twelve, once the combined racket of a rattling doorknob and the repeated banging of a fist against solid wood become too much for him to bear. Atsusmu suspects that Bokuto is responsible for both.

“What’re you two supposed to be, the Spanish Inquisition?”

“Are you going to kick us out?” Bokuto whines immediately, already knowing the answer.

“Yes. Get out.”

Sakusa shuffles awkwardly into the living room. Bokuto follows Atsumu into the kitchen. “We just got here! You’re among friends, Tsum-tsum. No ulterior motives here.”

“It’s convenient that ya’ showed up just in time for lunch,” he says as Bokuto sniffs hopefully in the direction of the stove. Atsumu carefully takes out a single bowl from his cabinet. Sakusa trails behind, looking weary, and pointedly does not ask for food, a gesture for which Atsumu is grateful. Bokuto, on the other hand, is many things; tactful is not one of them.

“We thought you could use some company, you know, spice up a Sunday afternoon,” he informs him. “Plus, no one knows what Atsumu gets up to on his off-days. Isn’t it about time we change that?” On his other side, Sakusa shoves his hands into the pockets of his hoodie, looking extremely uninterested. 

“Yeah, well, this is the worst. You’re the worst,” Atsumu says flatly, picking up a wooden spoon to stir the pot. “You never come over. There’s a reason you’re not allowed in here anymore. You’re not eating here again.”

“There’s a first time for everything.” He pauses. “A second time for everything.”

“There’s a last time, too,” Atsumu says. He doesn’t want to share his food.

“Rude.”

“Why are you really here?” He squints suspiciously.

Across the countertop, the pair exchange glances. Suddenly, Sakusa doesn’t look so uninterested. 

Okayu is a thick rice porridge simply made from rice and water. The consistency depends on the ratio of water to rice, but Osamu has always made it just about the same, even when they were kids. 

Atsumu will never have the zeal for culinary expertise that his brother has, but he knows enough to cook for himself. Today, his rice porridge is seasoned with salt, green onions, umeboshi, and other good things, all chopped up finely. It was cooked in leftover chicken stock to add flavor, and the warm smell of comfort that fills the kitchen is only just soured by the stench of bleach.

He glares at Sakusa, who doesn’t pause in his scrubbing.

“Do ya’ mind?”

“Your kitchen is filthy,” is all he says, and continues to disinfect every available surface with a vigor usually reserved for volleyball and disdain alone. Atsumu sniffs, indignant. 

“You’re joking, right?” His kitchen is perfectly clean.

“It’s about the quality of the life that you lead,” Bokuto inputs. His mouth is stuffed with rice. “We’re worried. Mostly about your terrible mating ritual with my Number One Disciple -” 

“He’s your _only_ disciple,” Sakusa cuts in, sounding bored.

“I have Akaashi.”

“He’s your boyfriend,” Atsumu corrects him. “That’s different.”

“Alright,” Bokuto concedes, “but at least I _have_ a boyfriend.” He shoots Atsumu with a pointed look. It is unappreciated. “ _I’m_ doing something right.”

“Miracles of miracles,” Sakusa mutters. Bokuto brandishes a spoon in his general direction, dropping grains of rice onto the floor. 

“Hey, _I’m_ worried about Hinata. _You’re_ worried about black mold. Priorities.” Atsumu lets his eyes roll into the back of his head.

“What makes you think I’m doing something wrong?” Atsumu kindly asks instead of chucking his own bowl directly at Bokuto’s face. He imagines the dull _thunk_ it would make against his thick skull, and the hot rice and water splattering into his eyes. It would be very satisfying.

“You’re an asshole,” Sakusa volunteers from under the sink. “Most people don’t pursue relationships with assholes.” Atsumu doesn’t ask exactly what it is he’s doing over there, because he reasons there’s no point in interrupting free labor when it’s offered. 

“Bah, that doesn’t matter,” Bokuto interrupts, waving a dismissive hand. “Kageyama was plenty mean to him in high school, always yelling at him, calling him a dumbass for three years straight, and then some. Look how he came out of it. He’s made of rubber. He bounces back.” 

“Wait, if the problem isn’t that I’m an asshole, then what is it? If that wouldn’t bother him?”

Sakusa pops his head out from under the cabinet, looking disgusted. Atsumu isn’t sure if it’s because of him or the alleged mold under his sink.

“Well, he wouldn’t stick around, then, now would he?” He looks up at him with disdain, as if Atsumu is extremely stupid, like _he’s_ the one on his hands and knees on someone else’s kitchen floor. “All we’re saying is it’s one thing if you sleep with him. But if he thinks that’s all that’s going on, nothing else is going to happen.”

Atsumu closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose so hard that it hurts. “Why are you really here?”

Finally, they leave him alone, and the apartment is blessedly quiet, save for the exhaust fan. Atsumu is on his phone, researching restaurants and dinner reservations. Just in case. 

_Why are you really here?_ Atsumu had asked. Sakusa had readily informed him that he was a dick, which wasn’t news, but - _you’re in love with Shouyou,_ Bokuto had insisted. Sakusa said nothing, which meant that he was in agreement. It wasn’t a question, or even a command. Well, duh, Atsumu thought. He’d been surprised that they’d noticed, that’s all.

 _Think about it_ , is what they meant. _Maybe learn a little something._

He considers it, sets his phone down, and picks up a spoon. Okayu is not going to eat itself. 

* * *

In time, they answer the question of the freak quick. It was on the tip of his tongue, something he couldn’t bring himself to say aloud, but a question asked nonetheless. Hinata doesn’t rise to the bait, not at first, but he can’t help himself.

As is the way of things, Atsumu is too curious, and Hinata is, simply put: too good.

This is what their coach has been watching for, what the entire team has been waiting for, tentatively hopeful. It is widely known by now that Hinata Shouyou is a phenomenon. It is understood by a select few that all he needs is the right person to give him the ball to become a miracle.

To Atsumu, this is not so much a miracle as it is a promise, six years in the making. Atsumu was seventeen when he said _Shouyou-kun, one day, I'm gonna set for you,_ and he meant it. He is twenty-three when he finally sets for him, and thinks _this is going to be mine._

His arm snaps through the air like a crack of lightning and the definite impact bellows like thunder, but the silence that follows is the loudest thing they have ever heard, louder than the sound of the ball ricocheting off of the polished floor on the opposite side of the net, louder than the _ba-dum, ba-dum_ of Atsumu’s heart in his chest. 

Off to the side, Shouyou examines his fingertips, looking stricken. He looks like he can’t quite believe himself. Then -

“DID YOU SEE THAT?”

“We all did,” Atsumu recites dumbly. Hinata is just about vibrating out of his shoes.

“Did you see how FAST it was? You were all like _wishaw_ then I went _bam_ and the ball went _whoosh!_ Can you believe it?”

“I saw it with my own two eyes.”

“Atsumu, you’re - that was -” he beams, a radiant thing - “amazing. _Thank you._ ” Hinata reaches out for him, like he means to grasp his shoulder, to shake his hand, to hug him, anything. Atsumu freezes. Up close, Shouyou’s eyes are very bright. For a moment, he feels like he can achieve anything.

As they enter the locker room, Hinata doesn’t say a word to him. Atsumu isn’t bothered. He’ll count his victories as they come. 

Shouyou agrees to go to dinner with him, which is a victory in and of itself.

“I like ice cream,” he says defensively when Atsumu raises an eyebrow at his plate. Chocolate ice cream from the dessert menu paired with Chardonnay is an interesting combination, after all. Their waiter is quietly livid, and if Atsumu is quietly besotted - well, that’s beside the point. 

“I wasn’t judging,” he insists. His own unagi is overcooked, anyway.

“I like men, too.” Hinata adds nonchalantly, and Atsumu drops a chopstick under the table.

“Yeah?” he croaks. Across the table, Hinata nods an affirmative.

(Later, he’ll reminisce about the dinner in his head, and he’ll wonder when it was that Shouyou decided he would take him to bed. He’ll never know the instant, but years later, he will remember this as one of the best nights of his life).

_Dear Osamu,_

_I have fallen in love. Suck on that._

* * *

There comes a day when Atsumu steps onto the court and can’t help but look over his shoulder. He is alone.

Aloud, he says, I wish I had my shadow back.

But you haven’t got your shadow, he reminds himself. You have only yourself, and a ball.

* * *

The next morning, Atsumu isn’t sure where to put his hands, so he doesn't. He wakes up before Shouyou, props himself up on one elbow, and takes one good, long moment to soak it all in. His hair against the plain pillowcase is a colored crown, and his lashes are long against his cheek. A thin line of dried drool trails from the side of his mouth.

Atsumu catches a glance of himself in the mirror hanging on the wall opposite. He looks just about the same as he did yesterday, he thinks. His own hair is straw-yellow with dark roots peeking through, and he has the naked physique of a young man who is healthy and active, fastidiously so. His lips have changed, though only slightly; they are more red and swollen than they were the day before. In the foreground of the reflection, Shouyou is tangled in his sheets, pliant with sleep. The corners of his mouth tug up without his permission, and the Atsumu in the mirror smiles back handsomely. 

Someday, Atsumu tells himself, you will be an old man, but you will not be unhappy. The thought is mollifying, to say the least.

By the time Hinata joins the land of the living, morning has bled into afternoon, and Atsumu is making breakfast. It is only soup from the day before, but it is hot and still good; it was made for eating, and there is no love cooked into it, but there is time and honest work, and that makes it just as healthy. 

When Hinata pads out of the bedroom Atsumu is struck by how small he looks against the countertops and the height of cabinets. Atsumu is not used to having guests, much less guests of Hinata’s stature. For a moment, the sunlight from the kitchen window hits him in just the right way, highlighting the bridge of his nose against the flat of his cheek, and he becomes gold, a figure possessed by the light.

He slides a bowl in front of him, and urges him to eat. “Rehydration is important,” Atsumu parrots, a perfect imitation of his brother, not that Hinata would recognize it. “We don’t want ya’ collapsing on the court today, eh?” Hinata eyes the soup with something like surprise. Atsumu drops a spoon into the broth, and bites back a grin when Hinata jumps at the sound. “C’mon, it’s not getting any warmer.”

“You haven’t poisoned it?”

“Hey, that’d be an awful lot of effort on my part, getting you into bed just to kill ya’ afterwards, even for me.” Shouyou raises the spoon to his lips.

“It’s good,” he tells him, and smiles around his spoonful like he means it, and Atsumu releases the breath he didn’t realize he was holding.

I can make you soup every morning, he thinks aloud.

“I could get used to that,” Shouyou says, quietly but decisively, and something in Atsumu’s chest unclenches.

That day, Shouyou shows up to practice with dark marks sucked into his neck, trailing below his collarbone and popping up around the flesh of his thighs. He’s mortified. Atsumu is fucking delighted.

Bokuto looks at Atsumu with something akin to fear, or congratulations. “I have...so many questions, but I don’t want to know the answers to any of them.”

Atsumu whistles, slapping his teammate on the back. “And it’s gonna stay that way,” he assures him cheerfully. 

It really, really won’t.

* * *

Their teamwork improves. So does his cooking. 

These days, he’s almost choking on happiness. Also, dick.

He considers it an added bonus.

“How was that?” Atsumu asks, rolling onto his back, breathing hard. Out of the corner of his eye, he sneaks a peek at the warm body next to him, which had been writhing with pleasure only moments ago and now lies lax and content by his side.

“As far as one night stands go, I’ll be lucky if I can walk out of here on my own,” Hinata mumbles drearily into the mattress, voice muffled by the linen. There is a fading tan line drawing a division between his torso and shoulder, and the clash between light and dark betrays both his Miyagi roots and his South American hiatus. Atsumu has traced this line with his hands and his tongue, feeling along his skin like a blind man reading a map. It is familiar now, but no less daunting, no less awe-inspiring. Shouyou is a new thing every time, an eighth Wonder of the World.

Atsumu reaches for him, seizing him around the waist and heaving him over with no small amount of strength, grinning when he bounces on impact against the bed and bracing himself above him like a cat leering over its dinner.

“A one night stand?” Atsumu cocks his head, pauses. “If I’m doing it right, you shouldn’t be able to stand.”

Hinata props himself up on his elbows, eyeing him for one long, incredulous moment, before flopping flat on his back again, letting out a quiet, deflated sigh.

“I hate you,” he says to the space of ceiling to the right of Atsumu’s head, but Atsumu only laughs.

“Nah, Shouyou, you don’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yeah, I do.”

It’s not a one night stand. It’s been many nights. Atsumu has promised himself that he won’t count them.

Atsumu moves to straddle him then, kneading at his hips with hidden glee when Shouyou’s response is to go loose and pliant under him, arching his back and giving into the pull of his grip. His hands, draped over Hinata’s compact frame, feel even larger than they are, and he marvels at the way that Hinata’s skin glows gold under a thin sheen of sweat. 

Here are the things he has learned about Hinata Shouyou:

He is right-handed, but is carefully ambidextrous. He has a younger sister named Natsu, and a mother who believes in ghosts. His favorite food is tamago kake gohan, a dish of hot rice mixed with raw egg, whipped to a frothy suspension. The sound of him crying out, his tongue catching on something that sounds like a name, when Atsumu swallows him down. He makes friends wherever he goes. His best friend is Kageyama Tobio, a setter for the Schweiden Adlers. They haven’t seen each other in almost three years.

“When did you learn Portugese?” Atsumu asks him one night. They are worn out, having both gone boneless with pleasure and then electric with it. The streets are asleep beyond the window, cracked open to a sliver. The moon is a white face in the dark, glowing through the blinds, listening to the rise and fall of Shouyou’s breath. 

“ _Naruto,_ ” he says shortly. His voice is rendered soft with sleep.

“I didn’t know Naruto spoke Portuguese.”

“He doesn’t,” Hinata yawns. “His dubbed version does, though.”

“Why was Shouyou-kun watching anime in Portuguese?”

“A friend thought it might help me.”

“Help you?”

“Pedro. He was my roommate, in Brazil.”

“Mm.” Atsumu hums to himself, and closes his eyes to imagine it. Ninja Shouyou, hunched in the dark, eyes glued to figures that move across the screen like technicolor ghosts, mouthing along to words that fight to form in his mouth. He is a boy-turned-man, just barely out of school, and he has come to play in a country where he does not know the people, does not know the language.

 _“While you’re alive, you need a reason for your existence. Being unable to find one is the same as being dead,”_ Naruto declares on the television, and in his mind, Shouyou bristles at the words, still young and unhappy and alone in Rio.

“Do you still talk to your brother?” Hinata asks suddenly, as if he’s only just remembered that there’s a near-stranger out there he’s barely met, walking around with Atsumu’s face.

“Sure,” he answers, surprised. “Why?”

“No reason.” Hinata sinks back into the pillows. He hesitates for a moment, and then - “Is it the same as before?”

“No,” Atsumu says honestly, and there’s some bitterness there, a wound that’s mostly healed over but still hurts if prodded.

“He cried, when I left,” Hinata says quietly. “Pedro. It was just me and him at the airport, and he was crying and I was just standing there, watching him. I remember being - being happy about it, a little. I remember thinking, _I did it, I made someone want me here. Someone wants me to stay.”_ Atsumu sits up and leans against the headboard. The carved wood is hard and cool against his bare skin, and juts out awkwardly against the muscles of his shoulder blades. “Isn’t that terrible?”

Hinata sounds very miserable. For someone so honest, he looks as though this one truth is gonna kill him, has been killing him for a while, however slowly. Atsumu wants to tug him close, wants to end the sentence in his own mouth instead, but he holds onto himself very firmly and doesn’t let himself.

“No,” Atsumu says instead, very carefully, “I don’t think that’s terrible at all.”

“I really thought you’d be different,” Hinata admits a beat later. “I thought you’d boss me around, and tell me what to do, and criticize me all the time. I’m new to this.” Atsumu opens his mouth to protest that _I wouldn’t do that,_ but closes it just as quickly, because there is a wistfulness to his voice that tells him that Hinata wouldn’t consider it a bad thing, not really.

“Whaddya’ do you think of me now?” Atsumu asks instead.

“I don’t think you’re terrible,” Shouyou whispers into the room, like he’s sharing something very private. “Not at all.”

He grins, and then remembers that Shouyou can’t see him in the dark. Atsumu reaches out to find his hand, threading their fingers together. He wants to press his lips against the pulse of his wrist, wants to kiss his knuckles and fall asleep curled together, but he doesn’t, because Shouyou is tired and he is tired, and together they might have all the time in the world.

* * *

Do not worry if you confuse “shadow” and “ghost”. For all intents and purposes, they are the same thing. Here is the gist of it:

Atsumu comes into the world screaming and covered in blood, as most babies do. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, although he’s not spectacularly proud of it, either; his twin, Osamu, with whom he shared a face, was almost completely silent for a good, long while, to the point where their mother feared that the silence was a sign of underdevelopment in the brain. 

As the story goes, that silence was broken a week later when Atsumu curled his tiny hand into the smallest of fists and shot it through the bars of their double crib with startling infant-precision, at which point Osamu screwed up his little baby face and unleashed a bloodcurdling wail that rattled the windows in their panes and had Atsumu chortling in delight. This is the beginning of a beautiful partnership, they were told, and so it went.

During their shared high school career, Atsumu and Osamu establish themselves as _The_ _Miya Twins_ , two monsters with the same face, a double image on a single court. There are whispers that they have a telepathic connection, that one brother is only as good as the other because they can read each other’s plays during a game like anyone else could read an open book. They are only rumors, of course, but Atsumu indulges them for fun, never denying the accusations, sometimes even winking seemingly in confirmation. Osamu rolls his eyes because _Atsumu, you’re a loser,_ but deep down, Atsumu thinks he likes it too, just a little. 

There comes a point during this illustrious period - which conveniently goes unnoticed by Atsumu - when Osamu decides that no, he doesn’t think he’d like to go pro, he’d rather open an onigiri shop all by himself and leave Atsumu in the dirt. 

Alright, Atsumu may lack the power of foresight, but he really ought to have seen this one coming. 

_(“The thing is, Atsumu, when it comes to loving the game...that’s a flame that burns a little brighter in you than in me, yeah?”)_

It might have saved him a lot of trouble, and one or two sleepless nights, anyway.

Atsumu is the best high-school setter in Japan, and now he’s gonna have to go into the pros alone. He’s also going to have to disown his brother for being an uncommitted, disloyal piece of shit. 

Goddammit.

Atsumu doesn’t remember when he first starts to talk out loud, even when he is by himself. 

When he was still a first-year, he would hum under his breath, quiet enough as not to cause a scene but loudly enough to irritate Osamu, just for fun. He used to mutter under his breath sometimes - in irritation at the girls who squealed too loudly on the sidelines and to himself when other players fell short, earning himself a nasty reputation in the process - but it was never necessary, never more than a half-formed thought, much less an entire train.

He didn’t before, at least, he didn’t think he did. But now he says his thoughts aloud too often for him to comfortably admit, since there is no one that they can annoy. 

He’d probably started talking aloud, when alone, when Osamu had laid down his cards in their second year, and not one of them involved pro volleyball. He thinks he screamed at him then, bellowing things that he knew even then that he’d regret, but he still meant them, and Osamu knew that. Practice changes after that. Passion becomes fury when it comes with a deadline.

It’s not like anyone really notices the difference. Atsumu has always been a little mean - so mean, in fact, that it keeps him honest, mostly. An Atsumu unfiltered is unpleasant to be around, but then again, real, candid shots are rarely pretty. His teammates are his friends, and they can take constructive criticism because they’re gonna be _professionals_ , and they can goddamn act like it. 

  
  


They probably think I’m crazy, he thinks aloud, but since I’m not crazy, I don’t care. 

There is a difference between a ghost and a shadow, but there is a sameness, too. Atsumu knows this. 

* * *

It is the day after Osamu drops the ball on him in both a figurative and near-literal sense. Practice is half over when Atsumu’s hand cramps up.

 _What kind of a hand are you?_ he thinks to himself in disgust, grimacing down at the offending hand in question. _Cramp, then, if you want. Curl up like a spider and die. It won’t do you any good,_ he assures it, and then he runs through drills again, determined to ignore both Osamu and the pain shooting up his palm when it makes contact with the ball.

By the end of practice, his hand is stiff, as if rigor mortis has set in without asking first. He knows it’s not dead, though, from the way that it aches, and from the way the far corner of his hand comes to life in pain when he moves it, along with the joints of his ring and middle finger.

“Fuck,” he mutters to himself. He’ll have to tape it at home.

Miso soup is considered a culinary staple of Japanese soup. There are many different ways to prepare miso soup, depending on its maker and the region. It is typically made with dashi stock and miso paste. The longer the paste has been fermented, the deeper and darker the flavor will become. Osamu’s best soup is the brown-red color of rust, with fish, daikon, carrots, and potatoes cooked into the dashi to a simmer. Atsumu doesn’t mind when he adds mushrooms, but that is a rare occurrence. Osamu hates mushrooms - he also hates instant miso packets, because when it comes to food, he prefers to take the long way around, although Atsumu himself hardly shares these views. Food is food, he reasons, and if it’s good, it will treat you well.

There are two brothers seated at the table. Outside, the sun is dying. One of the brothers pushes his chair back and stands. “Tsumu’,” he asks, “how long are you going to do this?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the other lies miserably. The first rolls his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose in irritation.

He slides a bowl in front of him, and Atsumu looks up at him, wounded, like a starving man who would rather waste away and die before opening his mouth even to save his own life. In other words, he’s a petulant child. “Eat,” Osamu tells him. “Ya’ look like shit.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Yes, you are,” Osamu firmly disagrees, “and you still look like shit.” Osamu’s not exaggerating - his brother really does look like shit. His face is pale, and his mouth is drawn into a hard line, thin and angry. Slumped over the kitchen table, paired with the dejected circles under his eyes, it is an underwhelming sight. Osamu eyes his brother’s hand; two fingers are taped stiff.

Come on, Osamu thinks, don’t be stupid. Eat it now, and it will strengthen your hand. It’s not the hand’s fault, after all, that it cannot withstand your hours and your anger, and if you don’t learn to love it like you love yourself, then it will die and be useless to you. But eat now, and it can stay with you forever. Go on, eat the soup.

Atsumu eats the soup. Osamu observes carefully.

Are you better, yet? Or is it too early to know?

He takes another spoonful, tasting the richness of the broth and feeling the heat searing his throat when he swallows. He finds a piece of fish in the mouthful and chews it slowly. It’s not bad, not at all. Osamu watches him intently, although for what, he’s not sure. The soup is good. He knows that already.

Be patient, hand. I’m doing this for you.

* * *

He’s come to accept it now, has taken his grief and swallowed it down like a bitter pill. He doesn’t linger on it anymore, no more than he has to, not like he did as a teenager, stewing in worry until his fingers pruned up. At twenty-three, Atsumu is at a point of acceptance in his life that few will achieve by the time they’re eighty. The truth is that the present is better now, and the future is even brighter. Sometime in between that time, though, Atsumu has been composing letters in his mind, none of which will ever be sent, although he suspects that a few have been read and received, anyway.

_Dear Osamu,_ one of his letters start, _Today, I played an entire game without thinking about you once. How about that?_

On a good day:

_Dear Osamu,_

_I had lunch with Sakusa today, and it turns out that you’re delusional. The mushrooms don’t do anything to the broth._

_You’re wrong. Sucks to suck._

Another begins: _Dear Osamu -_

It ends: _Fuck you._

“So then we got to talking.” 

He shoulders his phone, balancing it awkwardly against his neck, and reaches for an egg to carefully tap against the rim of his bowl. He, unlike his brother, never quite mastered the skill of cracking an egg with one hand. The shell would always crumble into itself, leaving a gooey mess of yolk and hard, inedible shards.

“And then you got naked?” Osamu asks, sounding skeptical even over the phone. “And now you’re basically living together?”

He stirs his rice with a pair of chopsticks, watching the yellow orb separate itself, disappearing into the grains. “Nudity,” Atsumu sighs, disgustingly happy, “the great equalizer.” 

On the end of the line, Osamu makes a noise of revulsion. Atsumu reaches for the soy sauce.

* * *

Even in junior high, Atsumu never worries about being unpopular, because he’s not. Unpopular, that is. Well-liked is a different story, but it’s not as if he has a shortage of admirers. Being _popular_ is easy. You just need to be charming and attractive and good at most things. Atsumu doesn’t have any trouble with that. Being _liked_ is a little more difficult, see, once he opens his mouth.

“Why don’t you ever bring friends over?” his mother asks once over breakfast, conversationally. “I know you’re busy, but your teammates, maybe?” Atsumu is about to respond that if his teammates are worth their salt, they won’t be bothered to waste time messing around at his house of all places, but Osamu beats him to it, the bastard.

“It’s because they hate him,” Osamu contributes, matter-of-fact. Both Atsumu and his mother start at that, eyes widening. This is news to their mother. Atsumu is just surprised that Osamu has chosen now of all times to run his big, fat mouth. Right now, he’s cramming rice into it at record speed. He knows what he did. Coward.

“Atsumu?” Their mother prods cautiously, as if asking for confirmation. The careful look on her face tells them both that she’s waiting for a rebuttal. She won’t get it.

“They don’t matter,” Atsumu says seriously, “if they can’t spike my tosses, they won’t be around very long.” He means it. 

Kageyama Tobio has changed from the last time Atsumu has seen him. He’s not the same goody-two-shoes he was in high school, for one. He played in the Olympic games as a nineteen-year old, the rookie who upset France. Who knows what he has learned? To Atsumu’s annoyance, his hair is different, too. Instead of sweeping to the middle of his forehead, coming to a point, it is parted in the center.

The thing about middle parts is that they can be very unforgiving, even on very nice faces, for a number of reasons, one of which is that it will inevitably draw attention to the face, regardless of whether it’s wanted or not - another of which is that any non-symmetry, no matter how subtle, will become evident, whether it’s a freckle, a crooked nose, or one eye that is slightly smaller than the other. 

Atsumu is of the opinion that a middle part can sour even the most pleasant of faces, ruining a great deal of second glances and further opportunities. It is fortunate for Tobio-kun, then, that his face is not only nice, but symmetrical. Atsumu is very happy for him.

Really.

When he and Osamu turned seven years old, their parents surprised them with a puppy.

Up until then, they’d shared most things in their life: toys, clothes, a bedroom, and several birthday parties, to the point where their parents had figured that a joint present wasn’t much more unfair, to their - predictably - shared disappointment.

The present, it turned out, was a Labrador with a brown chocolate coat and dark, trusting eyes, and, for a short while, her name was Taberu, and Atsumu loved her the moment he saw her. This was, unfortunately, not a universal reaction, because Osamu hated her just as quickly, letting out a high pitched scream when Taberu lunged forward, intent on slobbering drool all over the front of his jumper.

“It's just tryna’ be friendly,” Atsumu had said. He watched the dog, with whom he was beginning to feel a spiritual connection, chase Osamu around the living room. He laughed when his brother tripped over their unopened pile of presents, sprawling to the ground and leaving an opening for Taberu to come bounding over.

As it turns out, both Atsumu and Osamu are deathly allergic to Taberu, no matter how sweet and well-adjusted to children she may be, and in the end their parents must make the ultimate sacrifice. For the next week, the decision sends the household into chaos.

“You wanted her gone because you hated her!” Atsumu had snarled, with a hard look in his eyes and a characteristic curl to his lip. His small fist was clenched and shaking.

“No, I didn’t!” Osamu protested, rubbing his eyes, which were red-rimmed and puffy. “It wasn’t my fault!” Their mother wasn’t sure if it was from crying or from an allergic reaction to the dog hair that hadn’t yet been brushed from the couch cushions with a lint roller.

“Atsumu,” his mother scolded, “Taberu will find another family, and I’m sure they'll take very good care of her. Is that really something to be upset about?”

“Yes!”

“Why?”

“Because then someone else will get her!” Atsumu had nearly bellowed. Their father only clucked his tongue, looking very disappointed in him.

“Is that such a bad thing?”

Atsumu crossed his arms, scowled, and didn’t dare answer. _Yes,_ he’d wanted to howl, for a reason he did not know, _that is a very bad thing._

The game hasn’t even started, but he approaches the net like it has. Kageyama’s eyes are glued just to the right of him, and Atsumu doesn’t have to turn his head to know that it’s Shouyou, who is a beacon of untapped energy, who is the secret weapon everyone knows about, who is a childhood friend and partner and teammate and a _first._ _First_ does not mean _best,_ but it means _something_ , and Atsumu is not stupid. He knows what it means. He doesn’t have to turn his head, but he does, and he watches Hinata meet Kageyama at the net. He can see the back of his head and the lines of his shoulders and not much else, because he forces himself not to.

When they shake hands, he turns away.

Everyone casts a shadow. Shouyou-kun is not so different.

* * *

On the other side of the net, Kageyama’s face is a white shape, smooth with sweat, set ablaze by the lights. His eyes are very dark and narrow, slitted black in apprehension and glittering with thinly veiled hatred.

His lips don’t move, but Atsumu can hear him in his head anyway. 

What do you have up your sleeve, Atsumu?

Atsumu smiles across the court, that smile that girls call _boyishly charming_ and Osamu says _looks fucking stupid_ and Hinata returns, sometimes, with one of his own. Kageyama’s lips do move then - his mouth twitches into a sneer, cracking that learned stoicism down the middle of his face. It lasts less than a second and vanishes so quickly that Atsumu can almost believe it was never there to begin with, but it’s too late. His handsome, symmetrical face is back, but to the careful eye, he looks gutted. Distantly, Atsumu wonders if Hinata can see it too. 

Higher, further, faster. He can do it after all, Tobio-kun, just not with you.

Atsumu remembers that question, the one that went unasked. _What do you have up your sleeve, Atsumu?_

I have my hands, and my appetite, Atsumu thinks to himself. If I play my cards right, I’ll have Shouyou, too.

Atsumu tosses Hinata the ball. 

As is the way of things, he _soars_ and slams it home.

* * *

It is a warm day in the autumn of 2014, one of the last warm days of the semester before fall will succumb to October and the air will turn crisp and cold in preparation for winter. The trees are dying, but slowly and beautifully. Leaves drift to the ground in bright colors. Each night lays in wait, preparing to stretch itself as long as it can. 

The night before, as he and Kageyama walked their bikes down the mountain slopes toward home, Hinata had grabbed his hand on a whim, sending him stumbling after him, urging him to _walk faster, Bakeyama, I don’t want to be late for dinner._ It was only for a moment, but Kageyama had snatched his own hand back like he’d burned him.

Hinata stared at him. From a distance, his eyes were black, but up close he could see that they were a very dark blue. 

Kageyama didn’t say a word to him after that, even when prompted. What followed was a terse silence that felt heavier than the blanket of darkness settling into the evening, illuminating the lights of the town like candles in the distance. 

Hinata didn’t mind it then - Kageyama was not the most talkative of people, even at his most expressive. He could be forgiven.

However, that terse silence has the audacity to follow him into the next morning and later into the day; during practice, Kageyama has done nothing but scowl and avoid eye contact. He is slower than usual. When Hinata flubs a toss, he doesn’t even open his mouth to call him a dumbass. Something is seriously wrong.

“I think Kageyama’s upset,” he mutters to whoever is nearest - it is Tsukishima, unfortunately, who only looks down at Hinata over the lenses of his glasses. The rims gleam knowingly.

“How incredibly perceptive you are,” he remarks blandly, and Hinata beams.

Briefly, Tsukishima wonders what the weather’s like, up in the little world where Hinata lives. It’s a miracle that he knows up from down most days, if even he can’t see Kageyama’s uncharacteristic hesitancy for what it is.

Someday, he’ll know everything. Tobio will tell him - maybe not in words, but in other ways - and it will no longer be a mystery. 

That’s then, though. For now, Tobio is sixteen and so afraid that he is not exactly sure what it is that he’s afraid of. Here’s a hint: it has to do with himself, and the feeling that somehow, somewhere, two invisible pieces have finally aligned themselves. It’s a feeling that has crept up on him, that he shakes off during practice when the gym is full of the sensation of sweat and of movement squeaking against the floor, but returns and settles when the sun sinks in the west and he walks Hinata home after practice, down the mountain and towards the houses below.

Meanwhile, Hinata is seventeen, and not afraid of anything. 

* * *

Shouyou’s old teammates have come all this way to congratulate him. It is, after all, the spectacle of the decade, to watch the frontrunners of the monster generation finally go toe to toe in a professional sphere. Atsumu might’ve felt guilty, but - but - Karasuno will be here tomorrow, and maybe the day after that. There’s plenty of time for a reunion; what matters right now is that Shouyou comes home with him and it’s not even a question anymore, more like a lazy assumption, something that thrills him to the bone, the thought that they took all of Shouyou’s firsts but Atsumu will get the rest. He looks at peace curled on Atsumu’s couch, drowning in a sweatshirt that’s two sizes too large, his bag leaning up against the television stand across the room. Atsumu crosses his own arms behind his head and stretches his legs, propping his feet up in his partner’s lap. Shouyou opens one eye, then the other, and smiles.

He opens his mouth to ask _what do you want for dinner, Shouyou, my treat_ when Hinata’s phone starts to wail like an infant, and he remembers Kageyama and that sneer-that-never-was. As Hinata goes to answer it, Atsumu’s heart sinks into his stomach, heavy as a stone. He played the best game he could today, but he’s not as good a person as he is a player.

“Hello? Oh, hey! Is everyone there? I’m sorry that I couldn’t make it, but -” 

_“What the fuck,”_ says a voice on the other end of the line. 

“Who is that?” Atsumu asks, feigning ignorance. He knows who it is.

Hinata flushes, whispers, “It’s - ah, it’s an old friend.” 

“A rude one, apparently.” _Not as rude as me._

“Yeah.”

“Didn’t you say your friends were in town? I thought you were meeting up with them in the morning?”

“Afternoon, actually. Now, shh, I’m on the phone.” Shouyou reaches over to poke his shoulder, hard but playful. Atsumu reaches out to catch his hand, holding it still in his own. He brings two fingers up to his own mouth, darting out his tongue. He doesn’t take his eyes off of Shouyou, who is frowning into the phone.

“Ah, it’s Tobio-kun,” he drawls, right on cue, as if in realization, and he can’t help the vindication that rises in him at the abrupt _click_ on the other end. It dies quickly, though, at the look on Shouyou’s face.

Nah, he knows how this goes. Atsumu is an expert at subtext, remember? It’s all downhill from here. Such is the way of things, eh? Atsumu thinks to himself. 

Such is the way.

* * *

Shouyou plays like he’s hungry for it, like he can’t get enough. Osamu mentioned it offhandedly in their second year, and Atsumu couldn’t help but agree. The twins watched him from the bench. Hinata’s bright orange hair blended in with the orange of his uniform, and he seemed to glow against the backlight of the bleachers, vivid and small and uncanny.

He wins. Atsumu makes a promise, and Osamu can hear the spaces in between.

They don’t talk about it until they’re off the bus, until they’ve shrugged the weight of shame off their shoulders and ducked past the door of their house, and all is quiet. Finally, they talk about it. The conversation goes like this:

“Is there any miso left?”

“Yeah, but that’s mine.”

“I’m hungry.”

“Cook for yourself!”

“Mine doesn’t taste like yours, though, and I’m _hungry._ ”

“I don’t care.”

“I’ll starve! I’ll die. Are you really going to let me die?”

“At this point, if you die because you can’t figure out how to feed yourself, you were never gonna make it.”

“Yeah,” Atsumu agrees distantly. Then, to himself, “He was kinda cute, though.”

Osamu looks over at him as though his insides have finally begun to shrivel up. “Who? What?”

“The kid. The one who jumped.”

Osamu’s face sours unattractively. He's about to follow up with _well, damn, that could be anybody,_ but he knows exactly who he’s talking about. “Karasuno’s -”

“Karasuno’s number ten,” Atsumu interrupts him, already stepping into the kitchen. “Short, red hair, looked like he was gonna bounce off the walls if someone didn’t stop him.”

“Didn’t you call him a scrub?”

“Yeah, but that’s before I saw what he could do,” he explains. His brother doesn’t seem to understand what it is he means - _anything,_ is what it means. The kid could’ve done anything. With legs like those, he could make it to the top of the world.

Atsumu gets fixations. 

He’s been told that it is not a clinical thing, more like a character flaw: he’s not psychotic, for example, he’s just an asshole, he’s not obsessive, he’s compulsive, so on and so on. It means that it’s not dangerous, but it cannot be helped, so the best thing he can do is accept it at face value.

It also means that his greatest loves are the realest and the cruelest - volleyball is his leading lady, and will be until he dies, but that doesn’t mean he won’t have room for other things. She is a rude mistress, one who leads him by the nose and shapes him in her image, drawing his attention to the most beautiful of things. Volleyball is the most beautiful thing he has ever felt, and he has never stopped feeling it, something he is grateful for. 

That’s why it surprises him in his second year of high school when he watches Hinata Shouyou jump like he’s had wings all along and he feels it again - that rush of fear sparking through his central nervous system, giving away to fascination - and the beast in him stirs, cocks its head in interest.

_I feel for ya’, Tobio,_ says the beast, licking its lips. _You’ve got yourself a terrifying partner._

“We underestimated him,” Atsumu announces one night over his rice, curling his fingers. They are still in their second year of high school, and they have just lost the Spring High National Tournament to a school that had not reached the tournament in five years. The chopsticks clenched in his fist jut out in opposite directions, their points sharp like weapons.

“No, _you_ underestimated him,” Osamu corrects him. It is late at night,and he is tired. He has heard this all before.

“We can’t make that mistake again,” Atsumu continues, ignoring his brother. “It could cost us another game.”

“It’s going to cost you a week of sleep if you keep this up,” Osamu finishes for him, scowling. He wants Atsumu to shut up and start shoveling food into his mouth like a pig, like he always does. “How are you gonna beat Karasuno’s number ten next year if you’re dead on your feet?” That seems to trigger something, and Atsumu finally starts to eat with a familiar ferocity, not even looking up and across the table at his brother in time to see him rolling his eyes. Osamu mentally pats himself on the back. “No more watching game recordings at dinner,” he adds. “It’s been a whole week now, and _I_ for one am tired of watching _you_ watching _him_ jump around. I know that watching him late at night is your new favorite pastime, but I’m pretty sure that Mom and Dad want you to pick up a normal hobby, like crocheting, or actual porn, or something.”

Atsumu chokes on his rice. 

“Don’t get me wrong, you and Hinata Shouyou can have your _alone time_ up in your room, so long as the rest of us don’t have to hear it.”

He keeps choking. Osamu kind of hopes he dies.

“I’m going up.”

“Are you watching the tapes again?” Osamu asks wearily. It’s not really a question - Atsumu pauses at the bottom of the staircase and turns his head. He can see the lines of Atsumu’s back from here, gone all tense, shoulder muscles taut beneath his worn out pajama shirt.

“Nah, I’m done. I’ve learned all I can,” he informs him, and Osamu’s shoulders relax marginally. He looks slightly relieved. 

“Oh?” he asks hopefully.

“Shouyou is a monster. I meant it when I said that I wanna spike for him. And I will, before I die.” Atsumu concludes thoughtfully, resting his chin between forefinger and thumb. “It won’t be this year, or next year, but it’ll be someday. I can wait.”

At this, Osamu looks significantly less relieved.

There is an old proverb about childhood, about how in order to grow, we find the things we love and we kill them.

That night, he packs the tapes away and sets them aside. For the first time in a long time, the television screen is pitch dark, and it stays that way. After three weeks, the static chatter of the recordings has become his friend, and its absence makes him twitchy. Karasuno’s number ten has awoken something that lives and breathes and possesses him, but Atsumu has learned all he can.

The emptiness of the screen stares back at him, questioning.

Hinata Shouyou, he thinks aloud, I love and respect you very much, but I will kill you dead before I meet you again.

* * *

It is six years later, and Hinata Shouyou is not dead.

“Come to bed,” Atsumu begs, and Hinata lets him tug him to his chest, skin against skin, two hearts beating against two sets of ribs. He buries his face in the junction between his shoulder and neck and breathes him in, willing their pulses to slow together, to be one and the same. One of them pulls back, not to separate but to realign their faces so they are positioned inches away. Even in the dark, Shouyou’s eyes are closed. Atsumu wonders if on some level, he knows it too, like Atsumu knows it and has known all along, deep in his bones.

He reaches up to trace his eyelids, keeping the contact gentle, barely touching. Lashes flutter imperceptibly against the dry pads of his thumbs, and his lungs constrict. 

“Don’t keep me waiting, Atsumu,” one of them murmurs, and he doesn’t, doesn’t dare to.

They untangle themselves briefly, if only to reposition themselves, legs slotted together, hips pressed into a familiar heat. His hand slides easily onto his lower back and fits into the space like it was meant for him. 

They exchange breath between their mouths, until the hectic pace builds and swells like a crescendo. One more night, Atsumu tries to say. One more morning, Shouyou, and I’m yours.

When Atsumu wakes, he is not alone. There is a body next to him, warm with sleep, and he wants nothing more than to reach out and touch. He does not. The time for that has passed.

He slips out of bed and heads for the terrace, pushing past the glass doors and joining the world outside. He leans across the railing, taking in the way the air has turned sharp and natural and real on his skin. It helps him to wake up.

Atsumu waits in silence for Shouyou to stir, and to approach him. He hears him before he sees him. He can feel the shift of weight, can count his footsteps.

There are a lot of things he wants to say to him. 

I could wake up next to you for the rest of our lives. I could make you soup every morning. I could call you a dumbass and hold your hand and take you home. I’d be the best setter you ever had. 

Hope is a living thing. He’s on a balcony with Shouyou at five in the morning when he swallows it.

They stay out a little longer and watch until the cars begin to move in the street below, uninterrupted, unbothered. The apartment directly across from them is dark. Whoever lives there is still asleep, but the neighbor to the left of them is not, and faint music drifts from their open windows. The morning is a bleeding heart, streaking orange and pink through the clouds and painting the sky in color. 

  
  


Later: 

So this is love, he realizes.

_Dear Osamu,_

_I was wrong. It’s pretty terrible after all._

* * *

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


When he opens his eyes, he is dreaming. He’s had a dream like this before, only it was so long ago that he doesn’t quite remember where it ended or where it began, only that he is looking out of the gym from the doorway, into the world beyond.

He knows that if he turns around, he’ll see Sakusa and Bokuto and the rest exchanging tosses between themselves, sets of movement flickering across the walls, and if he tries hard enough, that extra shadow might just disappear. He’ll see Shouyou palming a ball, facing him, turned to amber and frozen in the light spilling from the doorway and onto the gymnasium floor like liquid gold. 

Someday, he’ll watch him rise above the horizon of the court and he’ll see him stay there, suspended in the sky like the sun, burning. Shouyou will see him, and only him, and when he reaches for him, they will meet halfway.

That is then. For now, Atsumu thinks, this is the beginning of something beautiful.  
He can’t wait.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> _“Will you make miso soup for me every morning?”_ is a variation of a very old and traditional Japanese marriage proposal. Make of that what you will.
> 
> The working music for this piece was [Hallucinogenics](https://youtu.be/doRUhDIB29s) by Matt Maeson.  
> ...  
>  _Drunken in Seattle, two more Xans and without a paddle  
>  I don't remember your face or your hair or your name or your smile_
> 
>  _'Cause I just couldn't open up, I'm always shifting  
>  Go find yourself a man who's strong and tall and Christian  
> …  
> And now I am just but the wayward man  
> What with my bloodshot eyes and my shaky hands_  
>   
> Thank you to everyone who’s made it all the way through, everyone who responded so incredibly to _part one_ , and to my editor, [astrae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aastrae/pseuds/aastrae), who kindly assured me that this chapter was ready and that I was also insane.
> 
> Feel free to kudo if you enjoyed or want to see more! I try to read and respond to every comment, and I’d love to read your feedback. ♡


	3. i couldn’t believe you were gone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> part three, ft. Kageyama, a series of postcards, and _Hinata,_ he thinks, _I’m not who I was in high school, either._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end of Haikyuu was beautiful, and long burning.
> 
> _“I couldn’t get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time.”_
> 
> — Richard Siken

Two days after Hinata collapses at nationals in their first year, Kageyama receives a text from an unknown number.

[ Unknown Number ]

_[10:45 pm]_

Hey

Tobio-kun

Who is this

_[10:50 pm]_

From training camp? Miya Atsumu. I’m the attractive twin

From Inarizaki?

That’s the one. I need a favor. Your spiker, number ten

Can I get his number?

**_Read 11:50 pm_ **

Kageyama stares at the message for a few seconds, baffled, and then taps out,

No

_[10:53 pm]_

**_Read 11:07 pm_ **

  
  


He doesn’t read whatever he sends afterwards. Kageyama doesn't know what Atsumu wants with him, but the last thing Hinata needs is some sore loser telling him that he’s a scrub, or that he should’ve gone to Inarizaki instead, or something. Atsumu seems like the kind of person who broadcasts his displeasure regardless of if it’s asked of him, and if Kageyama hears anything of the sort about Hinata, there might be problems. He has enough of those.

Instead, he shuts his phone off and plugs it into the charger where the white wire trails from the wall outlet to the edge of his table, barely visible in the dark without the light of his screen. 

Kageyama rolls over, closes his eyes, goes to sleep, and doesn’t think about it for about six years, because why would he? It’s not like it’ll come back to bite him.

Six years later, and Atsumu still basks under the attention of a crowd like sunlight, soaking it in, bone-deep. He is, unfortunately, still attractive. He’s also a huge, annoying pain in the ass. Case in point:

“Tobio-kun. Would ya’ mind not picking a fight with _our_ wing spiker?” he drawls, slinging a possessive arm over Hinata’s shoulder. Kageyama cannot help but wish that something very large and very heavy will fall on the setter right about now, or that he will trip in front of a large group of people later today, or something equally humiliating. Atsumu punctuates this with a lazy grin, daring him to say something.

“I didn’t pick a fight with him. _He_ picked one with _me_ ,” Kageyama shoots back, a little pleased with himself for not reciting one of his brief fantasies out loud. He doesn’t bother to add that it wasn’t really a fight, anyway. Atsumu has merely interrupted the sort of ritual that he and Hinata excel at, and have fallen back into as easily as if they had never left. He and Hinata are not so far apart, after all. After this, they’ll shake hands on the court and then it will be like when they were children, when it was only them and the game and the ball. 

“I’m here!” Shouyou screams to the crowd, to the world, and the audience roars back in affirmative, _Welcome home!_

Kageyama, deaf to the noise, only grins to himself. Something inside him swells and recedes into relief, into pride, into something else. 

Ah, that’s it. “Took you long enough,” he says, to himself and to Hinata. When they were younger and on the same court, they made a twin promise to wait and to follow, and although the exact nature of this pledge was rather unclear, it returns to him now, bright and alive.

Now Tobio is looking across the net. He sees Hinata Shouyou spike a toss from _his_ setter and drive it into the ground faster than his eyes can blink. It is faster than the freak quick that the two of them mastered as first years, the one that made them notorious on the court and gave them something to cling to in lieu of each other.

He sees a promise that is six years in the making, and it is one of his many fears realized, that he and Hinata Shouyou have grown up and grown in different directions. 

(You’ve read the first two chapters. You know what’s going to happen.)

The MSBY Black Jackals win, three to one set score.

* * *

  
Very early on, Tobio decides that his grandfather is the best adult he knows. He is a special case, because he is an old man with a job and things to do, but somehow, he still knows that Tobio is a very good spiker but an even better setter, and that he prefers ice cream over sweet cake for dessert (which he gets only on very special occasions) and that Tobio once cried because a cat swiped at him on the street. 

Perhaps it was a stray, or had grown to be vicious, or had been left out in the rain. Its claws only clipped the sleeve of his jacket, but it was afraid and angry and did not understand that Kageyama was not trying to hurt it, only pet it and maybe pick it up. Afterwards, Kageyama comes home with a red face shining with tears and his grandfather takes him up in his arms without a word, and carries him to the counter and gives him a spoon and bowl of ice cream. 

While Kageyama miserably recounts the tale through his hiccups, his grandfather understands, but laughs until Kageyama laughs too.

* * *

  
After the game:

“That’s one thousand and ninety-six wins for me, and one thousand and one hundred losses!” Hinata says, since the MSBY Black Jackals have won.

“Huh? That’s how many times now?”

“Yeah, you guys have played that many games?”

“It’s games and practices and all the other contests we’ve had since high school. We’re still keeping count,” Hinata says, grinning. “Oh, wait, I haven't added in my beach volleyball games yet. Think I should add my pickup games too?” Kageyama scowls, a practiced thing that he doesn’t really feel but feels as though he should do anyway, for old time’s sake.

“If you do, I’m adding in all my scrimmages,” he informs him, pretending to be exasperated. From behind them, Miya Atsumu scoffs with real exasperation - “Yeah, that’s enough of that. Just listening is exhausting me.” 

He ignores him.

After, _after_ the game:

Kageyama has a coffee date at nine. 

He can’t wait.

* * *

What were you like as a child?

Well, that’s a good place to start.

Now, if Tobio was anything less than very honest with himself - which is not very unusual for him - he would tell himself that the fact that he and his mother and father know next to nothing about each other does not mean that they are bad parents, or that they are a bad family. It simply means that they have never bothered to get to know him, and that being in love is quiet fanfare, something to be done in private. 

This, of course, is a convenient fiction created by a child who is hurt and grieving. 

Neither his mother nor his father have really known him since he was very small and their marriage was not strained on both ends, but time _can_ be made, and time must be made for a child to feel loved and cared for. The truth is this: they do love Tobio and his sister in their own quiet, private way, but they are too busy avoiding each other to not avoid the two of them by default. He never asks his sister how she feels about this.

Kageyama does not want for much (besides volleyball) but if he did, he might ask his father to attend one of his games (he does not, and he won’t until Kageyama has turned nineteen, and then he and Kageyama’s mother will buy a plane ticket and fly to Brazil). 

He never asks, because it is impressed upon him very early on that adults work, and adults are always preoccupied in some way or the other, and it would be inconsiderate of him to demand anything else of them. If Kageyama was forced to learn how to play volleyball on his own, he might have hated it, so it is a very good thing that his grandfather refuses to let him.

Kazuyo Kageyama dies when Tobio is in junior high. Tobio does not want to play alone, but this time, he does not have a choice. It is a good thing, he supposes, he has teammates, and Oikawa-san, to help him in the future.

* * *

When Hinata told him three days before graduation that he was going to leave the country, Kageyama had a distinct thought, which was ‘Don’t do this to me’. Later, he kicks himself because of how unfair it is.

“I’m not the only person you have,” he reminds him over the phone, _not anymore._

“No, you’re not,” Kageyama says rather slowly, _but you’re the best person I’ve got._

When Kageyama texts Hinata and asks him if he wants to meet up in Brazil, Hinata says no, and thinks, ‘After all this time, I have nothing to show for it. What would I have to offer?’

* * *

There are five children crammed into Hinata’s bedroom, including himself. Natsu is sitting right outside the door, face pressed up against the wood. They have all eaten dinner, and the windows outside peer into the streets at night. Kageyama will be staying over, and Yamaguchi, if his mother says yes. Yachi cannot stay overnight, either, because she is a girl. Hinata does not see an issue with this, because Yachi is a girl and their friend, but his mother seems to understand when she tearfully apologizes for rejecting the invite. Tsukishima declines of his own free will - it’s a school night, and he is not as dumb as the rest of them, clearly.

All the more reason you could have slept over, Hinata argues.

“Just sit still and play the game, alright?”

Hinata sticks his tongue out at Tsuki’s stoneface. Yachi flips a coin into the air and catches it in one small hand. “Yamaguchi, guess heads or tails. If you get it right, you get a pocky. If not, then you have to say a secret, something you’ve never told anyone before.”

Yamaguchi huffs in determination. He will be captain in a year - not that he knows it, but that courage will come from somewhere. “Heads.” Yachi turns her hand over and uncurls her fist. The silver coin gleams in her palms, and they all lean forward ever so slightly. If Tsukishima’s gaze is more intent than usual, it might just be Kageyama’s imagination, because the dark plays tricks.

“Tails,” Hinata announces cheerfully. “Go on!”

The room turns to look at him expectantly. Yamaguchi tries and fails to shrink. 

Finally, “I don’t like old people,” he blurts out. “They scare me. They smell funny. Every time they move, it looks like they’re gonna break. The skin on their necks looks like old wallpaper.”

“What the fuck, Yamaguchi.”

“I’m sorry! It’s true!” he wails, and so the game continues.

Sometimes, Hinata sleeps with an old stuffed bunny that is aged with love and more than a few years. Kageyama does not like cats, but not nearly as much as cats do not like him - _(“Duh, we already knew that!” “Shut up, Hinata!”)._ Tsukishima guesses correctly, _tails,_ and smirks until Yachi reminds him that it is a game of chance, and no real skill is required to win. She ignores the fact that his pile of pocky is a small mountain to her molehill.

“Tails?”

“Heads. Sorry, Yachi.” Tsukishima tells her, not sounding very sorry at all. “Go on, it's your turn. Give us a secret.”

“I - I don’t have any secrets?” Oh, gosh, is the room getting smaller? She’s sitting cross legged on the ground, but suddenly the ceiling feels a lot lower than it had a moment ago. The walls are looming closer, too.

“C’mon, give us something. Anything.”

“Um, uh, I -” she gulps. She is hot all over, like that time when she sat in the sauna with Kiyoko-san, only she doesn’t feel relaxed at all, only squirmy.

“You picked tails.”

“We all had to do it.”

“Yachi, what are you hiding?”

“Nothing!”

“Are you sure?”

“No! Yes, I mean -”

“Secret, secret!” the children (minus Tsukishima) chant like an incantation, louder and louder until it rings like bells in her ears. “SECRET, _SECRET!”_

“I think Coach and Takeda-Senpai are together!” she bursts out to three wide-eyed expressions, (including Tsukishima). The silence that follows is even louder than the din that preceded it. Yachi slaps her hands over her cheeks.

“What?” the boys ask, a perfect chorus. 

“Oh, god, listen - you - you can’t tell anyone, okay? Kikyoko had to go home early, so I stayed after practice to give Takeda her fundraising forms, and I found them...” she squeezes her eyes shut, and wonders if she can see heaven blinking out of sight in the darkness, “I saw them in the storage room?”

“Doing what?”

“What do you think?”

_“It?”_

“No, _ew!_ They were just kissing.” They look no less horrified. “Barely,” she amends, sheepishly. “Please don’t tell anyone. It’s none of our business. I would’ve never said anything - never - but I just, well, it’s been so strange, knowing it. All by myself, I mean.” She lets her breath out in one _whoosh_ of air. She feels lighter, somehow, like some crushing weight has been taken off of her ribs. “And if you think about it, I guess it’s kind of...sweet.”

“I think it’s weird,” Tsuki volunteers, and is ignored.

Yamaguchi rubs his chin. “Ukai? And Takeda? I don’t have a problem with it, but is that kind of unprofessional? A supervisor sleeping with a coach?”

“Don’t say it like that,” Kageyama instructs just as Yamaguchi concedes, “I guess all’s fair in love and volleyball.”

“I think _that’s_ stupid,” Tsukki scoffs.

“ _I_ don’t think it’s stupid,” Kageyama counters, firstly because disagreeing with Tsukishima is a principle and secondly because he understands the basics of democracy, and if four out of five agrees on one thing, then it will most probably be accepted for the good of the group so that fighting will not break out and they will not be forced to eat each other.

Tsukishima, who is probably an anarchist solely because his second hobby after volleyball is standing back and surveying the damage in front of him, scoffs. “Of course _you_ wouldn’t.”

“Meaning?”

“What do you think it means, _Mr. Invincible?”_ Tsukishima smiles like a shark who has smelt blood, and Yachi instinctively turns her head to stare at Hinata before yanking it back to ogle at Kageyama’s expression. Hinata tilts his head. He does not know what Tsukishima means, and Kageyama would like it to stay that way for now.

“What _does_ it mean?”

“I think it means that it doesn’t mean _anything._ ”

“Oh, I think it means _something.”_

“It’s not like that!” Kageyama protests hotly, with all the self-assurance he can muster. Yachi only gives him a kind, pitying look, and Tsukishima smiles as though he has just met a very stupid child who is not yet aware of the fact. It is not unwarranted, in Tsukishima’s defense, because it is, in fact, _like that._

Hinata looks back and forth. “What are we even talking about?”

* * *

“Edge play!” Atsumu says cheerfully. “Any thoughts?”

“Why do you always ask me this in public?” Hinata asks.

“WHY AM I ALWAYS HERE?” Bokuto wails from the doorway. 

* * *

When Tobio was fourteen, his parents signed him up for grief counseling. 

It is with a woman who wears very practical shoes, with flat heels and leather buckles, something that Tobio appreciates. She speaks with a gentle voice and treads lightly. Her questions are easy, mostly. She asks him how he’s feeling, if he has friends at school, and if he is sleeping well. _Okay. Sure. Yes._

Do you miss your grandfather?

_Yes._

Why? 

_He’s my grandfather. Why wouldn’t I miss him?_

I think it is perfectly normal for you to miss him. Is there something you would’ve liked to say to him if he was here right now?

_No. If I did, I would say it to him, not to you._

That is perfectly alright, Tobio. If you did have something to say, though, you don’t have to keep it to yourself.

 _What do you mean?_ he asks, suspicious.

He thinks it’s stupid, writing letters to the dead. It is supposed to be a cathartic release, but it feels suspiciously like a homework assignment. He hopes he will not be graded. 

His first letter has no address, so he writes down his own in lieu of wherever his grandfather is resting now. 

When he finishes, he folds it up into a very tight square and holds it out to her, but she only smiles and shakes her head. It’s his. Tobio shrugs.

It seems that writing to a ghost hardly goes anywhere, as is the way of things.

Here is a story that Tobio writes in one of his letters. I must warn you, it is not verbatim, but rather reworded for your better understanding:

There is a hero, and he builds a boat. 

It is a good boat, and it keeps him afloat in open waters, but like all good boats, it must not last forever. It sinks and drifts to the ocean floor like silt to the bottom of a glass.

From the decaying wood, someone builds a house. 

It is not a boat anymore. It is a house. 

It is made of old bones, and at its core it is the same, even if it has a different shape and a different use. 

Above, birds fly East, towards the sun.

Whoever lives in this house is lonely, but like all things, this will not last for always.

* * *

It is 2018, and Kageyama plays for the Schweidon Adlers.

He is the team’s setter, number twenty, and his teammates include Nicolas Romero, Ushijima Wakatoshi, and Hoshiumi Kōrai. For some reason, he and Ushijima are always roomed together by the coaches. He suspects it has something to do with their high school days.

The hotel they are staying in is a little nicer than usual. The carpet is high quality, thick and cream colored to match the walls. The sliding glass door that leads to the bathroom is stained red, and beyond it, Kageyama can make out a full length mirror mounted on the furthest wall. He turns away from it as he passes the doorway.

When Ushijima turns on the television, it flickers onto the sports channel. Without a word, he changes it. 

A reality show, where the contestants walk blindfolded over a pile of dead fish in front of a live audience. The contestants and the crowd are screaming. _Next._

A chef ladles steaming soup out of a large metal pot and pours it into a smaller bowl. He wafts the smell towards himself with his hand. _Breakfast, lunch, and dinner!_ he cries. _Next._

A mother lioness stalks a grazing antelope. She pounces, and misses. Her prey bolts. She and her cubs will be hungry for the night. _Next._

An American man with light hair and a tan coat professes his love to the woman sitting next to him, accompanied by glowing white subtitles. _I love you._ His eyes are very blue, and very piercing. The woman, who does not look into his eyes, only turns away. _So what?_ she sniffs, and the man rears back at her dismissive tone. Between them, a cat is huddled between their laps. They argue, and the woman leans across his lap and reaches for the handle of the taxicab door.

Kageyama’s eyes dart over to Ushijima, expecting the channel to switch once again, but his teammate's gaze is intent on the television and the remote is clenched loosely in one hand as if forgotten.

She throws the cat out into the rain and slams the cab door behind him. The camera pans closer to the abandoned cat, who looks wet and miserable. An iron fence lines the screen like prison bars. Inside the taxicab, the woman lights a cigarette.

“Have you seen this before?”

“Yes. My father likes American classics. He thinks that Audrey Hepburn was very beautiful.” It is odd to think that Ushijima is familiar with American films and actresses, and odd still to remember that he has a father, although Kageyama supposes that everyone has a father, in one way or another.

By the end of the film, Kageyama is on his phone and only half-paying attention. His teammate, on the other hand, displays a surprising and irritating ability to multitask.

“Would you like me to turn the volume up?”

“No,” he grunts noncommittally.

“Are you enjoying the film?”

“Yeah.”

“Is that Hinata?”

“Yes.”

“You talk often, I presume.”

“Yes.”

“That is a good thing,” says Ushijima, thoughtfully. “It means he still thinks of you.” Then, “Do you miss him?”

“Why are you acting like he’s gone?” Kageyama snaps angrily, feeling generous. Ushijima’s eyes widen just a fraction, but Kageyama flinches back anyway, recoiling from the barely visible shock on his face like he’s been burned. He has shocked himself, too. “I - I’m sorry,” he says. The words sound numb even to his own ears. “I didn’t mean - I didn’t -”

“It is alright,” Ushijima tells him, very patient, but it really isn’t, because Kageyama is so tired of people thinking that they know what he is thinking, of pitying him because Hinata is gone.

He’s not gone. He’s here, dammit, he lives in Kageyama’s hands late at night, glowing in the dark.

“I didn’t mean to say that he is gone, only that the two of you have been separate for some time now. That must be different.”

He belongs with him. He doesn’t belong to him.

Is there a difference?

“Yeah,” is all he says.

“Are you trying to move on from him because you are in love with him?” If Kageyama was eating or drinking, then something might have gone down the wrong way and he might have died on the spot. He is not eating or drinking, but he chokes anyway.

Ushijima is unphased, but Kageyama yanks the covers up to his chin. Most of the conversations he has are ones he does not want. This is no exception. 

He continues, “Maybe it’ll never happen. But if they do not want what you want, then maybe you should not pursue it until you both want the same thing. Disrespecting their wishes is...an oversight. It is bad form.”

Kageyama fights the urge to scowl. He doubts that Ushijima, unbending, iron-willed Wakatoshi, has ever suffered from bad form in his life. “It’s normal to feel this way, right?” he mutters into the duvet, more to himself than anyone.

He doesn’t expect him to understand. It’s not as if Ushijima has any firsthand experience in lingering on his regrets or in fantasizing about what could’ve been.

“Right,” is what Ushijima says.

“Then what should I do?”

He mulls it over, looking thoughtful - as thoughtful as Ushijima can look, anyway.

“You can kill a plant by giving it too much water,” Ushijima says finally, and that is that. The movie ends, and is replaced by a shampoo commercial. He gets up, flips the light switch on the opposite wall, and returns to bed. Kageyama hears him pull the covers back, and the exhale of the mattress dipping under his teammate’s weight. For a while, there is only the sound of heavy breathing, and of the clock mounted on the wall above the television set. 

_Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock._

Ushijima is two years his senior. Although his own eyes are closed, Kageyama frowns and tries to figure out the odds that his teammate’s sage wisdom has merely flown over his head all this time. He had thought that Ushijima was simple, but perhaps not. Kageyama just wishes he would stop speaking in riddles. He’s a wing-spiker, not a bridge troll. 

* * *

There is a term in psychology that refers to the discomfort we experience when confronted with an alternative existing reality that conflicts with a preexisting one. Here it is: _cognitive dissonance._

When Tobio is nine years old, he knows that his parents love him. 

It’s not so much that he _knows_ , rather he _believes._ He does not have a particularly overactive imagination, even for a nine-year-old, but the space his parents leave invites room that can only be filled with imagination. 

All children will reach an age when they come to the uncomfortable realization that their parents are real people, in that they have names other than _Mom_ and _Dad_ , and they make mistakes, in that their word is, technically, not law, and that they were once little children themselves. For Kageyama, this age is ten years old, give or take, and he comes to realize that while he has always tried very hard to _imagine_ his mother and father as people, the truth is that he doesn’t know them at all, though no fault of his own.

Alright, then, what the hell is wrong with me?

I diagnose you with _human condition,_ is something that a therapist might think but would never say, because, all things considered, human condition is a pretty shitty diagnosis. 

No one wants to be told that they are human, and that it is both their problem and their solution, even if it is true, because _How boring. How pedestrian._

* * *

Iwaizumi Hajime runs into Ushijima Wakatoshi in America, because it really is a small world these days. This can’t be real, he thinks.

It is strange to see him off of the court, looking tall and broad but entirely unassuming, if one ignores the fact that he is, perhaps, the only other Japanese person on the block besides Iwaizumi himself. Senior high is behind them, and he is relieved to see a familiar face, so he snaps a picture to send to Oikawa, who is off slumming it in Brazil. Maybe the world isn’t so small after all.

Over his shoulder, Ushijima cranes his neck slightly to look at the picture he’s taken. In the photo, Iwaizumi is smiling, but the flash caught Ushijima at a bad time, and he looks a little constipated. At least his own eyes aren’t closed. Oikawa would probably read this as a coded cry for help. 

That’s fine, Iwaizumi thinks. Let him worry. God knows he needs something else to distract him from whatever self-deprecating bullshit he’s probably dragging himself through right now.

“If Tooru was here right now, he’d probably have a heart attack. He wouldn’t dare, though. He’s working himself to the bone for Argentina,” Iwaizumi adds, and elbows him with a grin. “I guess he’s not the only one.”

In some other universe, we could’ve been friends, Iwaizumi thinks.

When he volunteers this information to Ushijima, concluding it with an, “Oh, yeah. I think I suggested that to him, once,” Ushijima curiously asks,

“What did he say?”

Iwaizumi tilts his head and squints in recall, reliving something sour. “We were walking home from school. I think he tried to throw himself into oncoming traffic.”

“Oh.”

Ushijima looks somewhat dejected at this - whatever version of dejected that Ushijima can muster, anyway. Iwaizumi opens his mouth, closes it, and tries to search for the words to explain that being friends with Oikawa is kind of like community service, something that must be done for the greater good; it can become enjoyable for reasons that have to do with altruism and maybe Stockholm Syndrome, but he is still the ultimate pain in the ass.

“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” he jokes. Ushijima does not smile.

“He seemed like he was a good friend, or a good teammate, at least.”

Ordinarily, Iwaizumi would have disagreed on principle, because Oikawa is venomous, lethal like a snake in the grass, but he is his best friend and he still remembers when he was young and all elbows and gangly limbs, still growing into his face and his own expectations. Not a lot of people knew this Tooru, and even fewer remember, so it is something that Iwaizumi keeps close to his chest like a precious thing. Ushijima is not exactly wrong, anyway.

He thanks him, and goes on his way.

“So now you’re hanging out with Ushiwaka?” he snipes. Oikawa does not pout; he festers, and frowns, and then forgets all about it. Iwaizumi rolls his eyes, a gesture that does not go unnoticed even through FaceTime.

“I wouldn’t call it hanging out...” he trails off, sounding guilty, because that’s exactly what it is.

“Traitor.”

“You’re a baby.”

“At least I’m not a big, ugly, brute like - oh, speak of the devil, Ushijima. How nice it is to see you.” Oikawa relaxes his scowl into an angelic grin, the kind that makes babies cry and boys bring milkshakes to the yard. Ushijima stares at him with the flattest expression he has ever seen. 

“You have not changed,” is all he says, simply, and Oikawa seethes on the inside. Ushijima takes note of this and adds, with a considering look, “That’s alright. Neither have I.”

“Don’t lie. You’re no good at it.”

“It’s the truth,” he says with a shrug of his massive shoulders.

“So, when are you going back to Japan? Have you established a working dictatorship over your team yet, or will that take a few more months?”

“I am _not_ a dictator.” Ushijima cannot help but frown at that, because the Schweiden Adlers is a team before anything else, and he is working harder than he ever has before just to deserve a spot on it. It has been more difficult than he anticipated. On the other side of the screen, Oikawa only crosses his arms, audibly clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth. 

“Yeah, well,” he sneers “you _are_ a dick, so -”

“So what?”

“So there.” Oikawa sticks his tongue out at him, and Ushijima sighs to himself. He cannot believe that this handsome, talented, _childish_ man is a grown adult who takes care of himself. From the dead look in Iwaizumi’s eyes, he can hardly believe it either.

“Listen, Shittykawa -” he glowers at him, which Oikawa easily translates into _shut the hell up, crackwhore, you’re being rude._

“Oh, Iwa-Chan. Always so eloquent, after all of these years.”

“Shut up!”

“No,” Oikawa starts, sounding pained, pinching the bridge of his nose, “you don’t understand, just looking at his face makes me lose faith in God. Look at him!”

“No.”

“Look at him! Look at his face. Look at his smug little - look!”

“Oikawa,” Iwaizumi starts in warning. Distantly, Ushijima wonders if this is a conversation they’ve had before.

“Oikawa?”

“Go back to whatever farm you came from!”

“I am not needed there,” he informs them. His mother is old, but she is strong and healthy. If Ushijima did not feel comfortable leaving, then he would not have. He is at peace with this decision - Oikawa seems to recognize this.

“Oh, go suck a cow tit, Ushiwaka.”

“You mean an udder?”

“You know what I mean.”

If Oikawa wants to play games, then Ushijima will gladly let him. He settles back and tries not to smile to himself. “I suppose I do.” Then, “I have a four-year-old niece, Oikawa. You remind me a lot of her.”

Tooru’s beautiful face screws up in indignation. “I am _this_ close to committing a hate crime,” he hisses, pinching an invisible space between his forefinger and thumb. 

“Because you remind me of a beloved family member?”

“Let me guess, you told her that she should’ve gone to Shiratorazowa, and she didn’t, so now you kindly remind her at every family get-together, is that it?”

“No,” Ushijima says, sounding bewildered. “She is four years old. She is too young to attend senior high. She is just out of diapers.”

“And she reminds you of _me?”_

“She is petty,” he hums thoughtfully,“and throws tantrums. She has a lot of potential. She demands things. She has no sense of object permanence. She likes shiny rocks.” Oikawa balks, appalled. His mouth opens and closes like a fish out of water as he searches for words.

Iwaizumi aggressively massages his temples. _Please,_ don’t _use your words,_ he pleads. An angry Oikawa is one thing - Iwaizumi has handled Oikawa’s tantrums for their entire life. Oikawa being irritated is another thing, as well. He’s always upset about something, however small, but it will pass. Oikawa being irritated and angry at Ushijima? That is a third and worse thing.

“Iwa-chan, hit him for me!” is what Oikawa settles on. 

Iwaizumu closes his eyes and does not open them. “No.”

* * *

Ushijima Wakatoshi is from a family of farmers, on his mother’s side. 

He grows up living in the dirt, picking things and eating them while they’re still alive and still vibrant, and learns to snap a bean and string quickly under calloused fingers. His father teaches him to love volleyball, and how to play, and then he moves overseas. His mother takes it very well, all things considered, and so does he, apparently. He has reason to believe that it was an amicable separation; later, someone will offhandedly tell him that he is a _child of divorce,_ and he will only think, _no, I am a child of my mother and my father._ It is that simple. 

He is left-handed as a child, which is uncommon in the volleyball world. The world is made for right-handed people. His mother wants to coax him out of it, but his father advises that he stick with it, that he sticks true to the things that are himself. He compromises, and coaches himself into ambidexterity, although he will always favor his left over his right. This is enough for him; on either side of him, his mother and his father support him in his pursuits, and Wakatoshi is not left wanting for anything, not really. He is grateful for the opportunities he has been given, and he is willing to press what advantages he has, to work that ground until it is turned, fertile, and ready to support life.

(He has friends. Some distant part of him wants more. He wants to never leave the court, and so he wants to go to nationals. He wants Oikawa Tooru to set for him.)

Good luck. 

_I don’t need it._

Everyone needs a little luck.

They are in junior high, and he has won another match. It was not too easy this time. 

“Oikawa,” he says, holding out a hand, “I look forward to playing against you in the future.”

“Piss off,” Oikawa says lowly, his voice and his smile saturated with venom, sickly sweet. He does not dare shake off the handshake, not with the coaches watching, but he does squeeze Ushijima’s fingers between his own, hard. They are long and strong, and he can feel the calluses formed right where they should be. It hurts, but Ushijima does not flinch.

No matter. Some things take time. The good things will come. He will wait.

* * *

“Kageyama, don’t be so mean!” Hinata gripes. His serves have improved enormously since last year. Kageyama is just a selectively meticulous bastard. If he spent half as much time yelling at Hinata about volleyball as he did for their maths, the two of them might have a passing grade in the class.

“Then don’t be such a dumbass,” he snaps back like usual, but, to Hinata’s resounding delight, his voice cracks on that last note, mortifyingly high. Kageyama goes very still and very red.

“You sounded like Yachi just then.” Hinata says with wide, dumbfounded eyes. 

“Shut up.” Kageyama reaches out to slap the back of his head, but Hinata dodges him easily and dances out of his reach.

“You shut up!”

“ _You_ shut up!” he snaps, only for his voice to crack again on the first syllable. Another resounding silence. Kageyama wants to die.

Then, “ _You shut up_ ,” Hinata singsongs in mock falsetto. “ _Hinata, you shut_ \- ow!”

“I think I’m dying,” he admits quietly to their team captain, later, when practice has drawn to a close for the day and the rest of the team has dispersed into the courtyard and the street. The third year looks sympathetic, but Kageyama doesn’t want sympathy right now. He wants reassurance.

“It’s puberty. It happens,” Ennoshita tells him, trying to be kind. The look Kageyama exchanges with him in response is one only further convinced of impending death. 

He thinks of Nishinoya and Tanaka, both of whom would have continued to proclaim their undying love for Kiyoko every day if only she hadn’t graduated a year ahead, and of a teenaged Miwa screeching like a banshee into the bathroom mirror at the red pimple blossoming on the tip of her nose.

“I don’t want it,” he tries and fumbles, but even he knows that by now he has long since hit puberty, and to be honest, he’s not doing so hot. “Listen, I get heart palpitations, and then I think I have a fever, sometimes -”

“Sometimes?”

“Not all the time. Not during games, usually, but -”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone you were having health problems?” The team captain frowns. The club is a team. Just as important, the team is friends. Kageyama shrugs.

“I usually only get it at practice, or after school, or during lunch. Not during matches.” In truth, he’d barely noticed it until now. “When I’m on my own, I’m fine, but it’s mostly - it’s with -”

“With Hinata,” Ennoshita finishes knowingly. 

“I think I’m allergic to Hinata,” he says seriously.

“Um,” Ennoshita says. He learns from mistakes. He still remembers Daichi, may his soul rest in peace. He’s not doing this shit this year. “Listen, is there someone else you can talk to about this? Someone you look up to?”

All these symptoms he carefully lists and repeats to Oikawa over the phone, feeling very foolish. “What’s wrong with me?” he finishes. Whatever it is, he hopes it can be fixed by the next day, or at least by the end of the week.

“Well, Tobio-chan,” Oikawa begins wickedly, “when two volleyball players love each other very much -”

* * *

There is a thought experiment that posits the question: 

If Theseus’s ship has been repaired and nearly every part replaced, is it still the same ship? 

There is, of course, a simple truth to the matter, which is that Thesus, the hero who will conquer a great labyrinth with only a spool of thread, does not give a shit about whether the ship is his or not. 

Now, of course, suppose that he did care, then he might have asked himself, _if not, at what point does it stop being the same ship?_ At which point he would count each plank separately, turn it over in his hands, and wonder whether it is part of his ship, or if it is taking his ship away from him, in some way. How much can something change and get away with it, until it turns into something else, until it’s some kind of murder? What are one thousand, ninety-six old boards to one thousand and one hundred new ones?

Well, he doesn’t care. All that matters to _him_ is that it is no longer made of rotting wood, and that it will keep him afloat. He has sights to see, and a Minataur to slay, and memories will not keep his ship intact. 

* * *

Kageyama Tobio is very young, and an Olympian. Although he is in Rio, his best friend, who feels years away, does not want to meet him. Since his best friend also lives in Rio, he cannot help but think that the problem is not scheduling, but _him_ , which is rather worrying. Thankfully, Kageyama has other problems to address, namely that his hair is getting too long, falling into his eyes and sometimes dripping sweat onto his face, which is distracting. It will not help him play volleyball. 

He sighs, and reaches for his phone again, the damning, disappointing thing. It is laying on the opposite side of the room. Thankfully, it is not broken.

He needs to make a call.

Miwa cuts a stark figure in the doorway, dark and bold and beautiful. The silver scissors in her hand gleam like a knife. 

“Did you know,” she begins, popping her gum, “that a lot of people who want a radical, different haircut are really just trying to exert a degree of control over their own lives that they think they’re missing? What they want isn’t just a few layers, highlights, toner, whatever - they really want to be a shiny, brand new person, and they trust me to do it.” She beams. “That’s an awful lot of pressure, but then again, it’s not really up to me, now is it?”

“You’re a hairdresser, not a psychologist,” Kageyama snaps sullenly, without really thinking. His sister is a lot of things. What she is not is someone who likes to be told what she is. His hairdresser sister glares up at him from under her bangs. Her eyes could kill ten men.

“Yeah, and I’m your elder. I know more than you, anyway,” she chides him, and lets herself in. “You’re lucky, brother-of-mine, that I didn’t have any appointments today. Then you’d have to learn how to cut your own hair, and wouldn’t that be a sight?” She hefts the weight of the scissors in her hand, considering. From here, it looks like a threat.

She stalks closer.

The last time he’d seen her face-to-face, she had hugged him, kissed him on the cheek, and ignored the dried sweat on his face while their parents looked on.

Now, “I knew you’d do it,” Miwa remarks. It is a factual statement more than anything, just barely congratulatory.

“Thank you,” he says, because that is polite.

“I knew it before your third year, you know. University life just isn’t for you. You needed a shortcut,” his sister continues as if he hasn’t said anything. He may as well not have. “There’s no shame in that, no matter what Mom and Dad say to you.” Kageyama startles at that, and Miwa curses when her blade nearly clips his ear. “Watch it!”

He settles back. Neither his mother nor father have said anything about it to him, _our son, the Olympian._

“I didn’t mean anything by it, by the way. I think they’re proud of you, actually. You have a long and prosperous career ahead of you.” Something in her voice goes almost soft then. “And you’re doing it because you want to. That’s good. _I’m_ proud of you.”

“Thank you,” he says, and because he doesn’t know what else to say, “do you remember when we played volleyball together?”

“Yes. I liked it.”

“You were good at it.”

“I was, wasn’t I?”

“You quit.”

“I quit because I didn’t want to cut my hair. Who knows, maybe if I _did_ cut my hair, I could’ve been just as good a player as you.” Miwa thoughtfully taps the corner of her chin with the scissor shears. Kageyama retreats back into himself, because now what is he supposed to do with that?

Miwa remembers Tobio when he was a child. 

In her memory, he was first a darling baby, and then a wailing toddler, and then a little kid who was alternatively earnest and sullen. Miwa will tell him now that he was too serious then, dead serious, even when it came to the things that he really liked. Especially with the things that he liked. 

“You’re too young to be so worried,” she told him once, observing the small crease in between his brows. 

“Whatever.” His face screwed up, like an old person’s, and while she has long since forgotten exactly why he was so perplexed, she remembers smiling at him with an open fondness that he misinterprets.

“What?” Tobio had snapped defensively.

“You’ll be old when you’re twenty five,” she’d laughed, and he hadn’t understood what she meant then. 

Now he does, and he only thinks to himself, no, I think I’ll be young forever.

Sometimes she feels bad that she didn’t stick around somehow. Their childhood home is a big house, and with Grandpa gone and their parents rotating in and out on a weekly basis like it’s a motel there’s no way that Tobio can fill it on his own. She tries to call Tobio when she can, but their conversations are usually terribly short-lived, and void of anything but affirmations, and mandatory thanks, and long silences that stretch through the seconds and make her nervous. She wonders how frequently their mother and father call. She wouldn't bet on it, because although she’s got a good idea, Miwa does not want to be cruel.

It is only during his first year at Karasuno that she actually learns something worthwhile: it’s a name, one that he mentions over and over, seemingly without embarrassment. This person is short, hyper, loud, and the most irritating person he has ever met. He tries to steal pork buns on the way home from school, and sometimes he serves the ball into the back of Tobio’s head, the idiot. Tobio is at his wit’s end, and Miwa is ecstatic.

He may not sound happy, but for Tobio, he sounds practically besotted. What is it about Hinata Shouyou and the rest of his volleyball team that has awakened this dormant person that was living in him all this time? Whoever they are, she should thank them. They seem to have done more for him than she or their mother and father have done in fifteen years.

It is then that she realizes that this club is probably the only home he's got, and if she knew him better, maybe she would've realized that Tobio had begun to think that too. 

In the present:

“Do people change?” Kageyama asks. Miwa hums quietly, shifting on her feet. Her fingers card through his hair, which is slicked wet and combed evenly against his head, awaiting judgement. Kageyama closes his eyes and imagines the sound and weight of her scissors, which are abnormally heavy but _snip_ crisply and cleanly as though they are not.

“Maybe,” she says finally. “Maybe they just become more or less of themselves. Or maybe they just get better at hiding it.”

The teeth of her comb dig narrow and sharp against his skin, and when she parts his hair down the middle it feels as though she has taken a scalpel to it and has made a razor thin incision along the seam of his scalp. Maybe she’ll split him open, he thinks distantly. Maybe she’ll find a real boy.

His sister angles the mirror towards his face.

“How do I look?” he asks her, because he doesn’t really trust himself to know. The Kageyama in the mirror stares back at him, with an expression he’s not sure what to make of.

“Do you like it?” she presses, not really answering. He takes a harder look.

He looks different. Changed.

* * *

In Miyagi, the rain is good. The water is clear and fresh and it is here to cleanse the earth. 

One day, when Tobio is sixteen, the sky turns an oppressive, mottled gray, and storm clouds gather together to block out the sun. Practice is over, and it is just himself and Hinata squinting through the downpour, running over wet-slicked roads and skidding in puddles of rainwater, shouting in wordless laughter and soaking the ankles of their pants in mud. When he looks up, the sky is the color of slate. It is only when the rain pelts hard enough to sting and the grumble of thunder goes ominously low that Kageyama grabs his arm and pulls him towards the closer of their houses. They jostle each other, shoving shoulders and trying to trip each other up. It becomes a race, once Hinata realizes where they are going, and he easily compensates for Kageyama’s longer stride with his own endless supply of energy, screaming as he goes, _Aaahhhhh!_

Kageyama does not mind this, not really - _Shut up, idiot, you’re too loud! -_ and is already running the night over in his head.

Hinata can phone his mother to tell her that he’s staying over tonight. He has all of his schoolwork, if he wants to do it, and their uniforms will be dry by the next day, anyway. There is rice for dinner and for breakfast, if he wants it, and fish. They have eggs, too, which he knows that Hinata likes cracked hot over rice.

It is only when they come to a halt in front of his house that Kageyama realizes how vacant it is. The white walls have dimmed to gray in the rain, and water drips steadily from the shingles of the roof like tears. The locked windows peer out at them like black eyes, sunken-in pits, and he comes to the startling realization that they will have to cook Hinata’s eggs themselves. It is a poignant disappointment to any boy or girl to hurry from school to a cold, empty home with no warm meal prepared for them. Kageyama is used to this, but it bothers him now because Hinata must have expected it. Hinata’s mother is a wonderful cook. Kageyama trusts himself to boil water, at the most.

They stare up at the empty house. Kageyama doesn’t dare to speak, but Hinata breaks the silence, as is the way of things.

“Why are they never home? You’ve met my mom, and my sister. I feel like I've never met your parents. I know they exist, though.”

“I told you, my mom is overseas right now.” He hopes he doesn’t sound as pathetic as he feels. He pulls out his house key and twists it into the lock to avoid making eye contact.

“But what about your dad?” Hinata presses, insistent. The door unlocks with a click, and he pushes it open. Beyond the door, there is only darkness. He cannot imagine inviting Hinata in now. It looks as cold on the inside as it is outside. His teeth are chattering.

“He’s at work. He’s always at work,” Kageyama says, although it’s not really an excuse. He wonders if he should apologize, because he dragged Hinata to an empty house with nothing to offer but himself. That is not something a thoughtful, considerate friend would do. He is certain that Oikawa or Suga-san would never be so presumptuous. 

Hinata stood on his doorstep in the rain and took his hand and led him into that half-dark, braving the black and the empty for him. In that moment, his back and his hair were a glowing beacon, things solid and untouchable.

* * *

When Tobio is a boy-almost-man, he has a series of recurring dreams that are as strange as they are wonderful. In the name of confidentiality, we will grant him this one privacy, in that we will not discuss the exact content and context of most of these dreams. All you need to know is that while these dreams are not prophetic in nature, in the end, they are very telling of his own nature, and of what he wants.

When Kageyama grows up, these dreams don’t fade but they do change and retreat. In one of these dreams, he is sixteen again, alone on an empty street except for another boy, and he goes screaming and crying and pressed up against him, wet in the eyes and the mouth, _I love you_ rising up and out of him like rain pouring into the cup of his hands and running over the sides.

In the real world, when Tobio was sixteen, he sent him all the tosses he asked for and only smiled at Hinata when the spike connected, when the high of winning had made him brave.

* * *

Hinata is not good at maths, or at English, and never has been. He made his peace with that a long time ago. He knows he is good at love, though. He loves a lot of things: volleyball, and his family, and his friends. Hinata was not very good at volleyball, not at first, but he taught himself a good trick: he never made peace with that, and returned time and time again to slaughter it. That is love.

He has a mother and a sister, and has had them for forever. Tobio has a sister, too, who is very beautiful and very much like him, at least, in the important ways. Tobio has encountered Natsu, and has spoken to her often, but his own sister is older and no longer lives at home, and so Hinata has never met her. She might not even be real.

She is, though. He’s seen her in photos, one hung up in the hallway and one propped up on the mantle of the fireplace, and he had just barely caught the obvious, surface similarities between the two of them - her eyes are large and dark to match her hair, her face is white and noble, and she looks like she’s tall for a girl - before Kageyama had seized him by the sleeve and dragged him up to his room, mumbling something about Hinata being an _incredibly annoying snoop who should mind his own business._

They don’t talk about Kageyama’s family, which is fine with Hinata, but somehow the fact that they _don't_ talk about it speaks volumes anyway. 

He’s seventeen, and there is so much he does not know about Kageyama Tobio.

But they are seventeen and sixteen respectively, and for now, it’s enough.

* * *

When Hinata is twenty years old and lives in Brazil, he is not very good at his job, at least not in the beginning.

On his bike, it is both familiar and it is not. He is used to the push of his feet against the pedals, the pull of the gears turning in place underneath him, the strain in his shoulders and core that develops after a particularly long day. What he is not familiar with is the heat, and the roads, and the weight that presses down on his back and his chest. He does not speak Portuguese very well, yet - has barely grasped onto the basics - and it shows, especially when the recipients of his late deliveries are displeased, that much he can tell. It is a universal truth that _fuck off_ sounds the same in nearly every language.

It’s his fault, of course, because he gets lost in the streets and in his own head. The sky and the sun beat down on him, hot and grueling cerulean, in a way that Miyagi did not. In his mind, he is back there and nowhere near there. In his mind’s eye, he sees what is ahead of him and out of his reach - a future, so vivid that it is almost real. He can see it now, and it’s close, it’s so fucking close. Hinata is a small giant, and he carries the red circle and star on his back. This weighs heavily on him.

Hinata is reminded of the vibrancy of this dream when he meets Oikawa on the beach, and suddenly, his shoulders feel lighter than they ever have.

The breeze had picked up about midmorning, and there were spits of sand in the air, blowing around like fine, glittering clouds of dust, and all the beautiful men and women held onto their towels and their things. Later that day, Hinata went inside for an early supper. It was not uncommon for him to eat with a friend, but this friend was something unexpected. He might as well have been carried in by the winds himself.

“So, Chibi-chan, did you meet up with Tobio when he was in Rio?” Oikawa is sitting in front of him, looking expectant.

“Huh?” At the unexpected question, Hinata nearly drops his fork. “W-why?”

“Like I said, the Olympics,” Oikawa says slyly, his own fork hovering in the space between his plate and his mouth. He is a pretty man, with long lashes and very nice hair. His skin is barely tanned, glowing gold. He has not been here for long.

“Right, right, the Olympics,” Hinata corrects himself hurriedly. “No, I was...preoccupied.” He suspects that Oikawa can read his mind, or that he knows something Hinata does not. He cannot imagine what it might be.

There is no other reason for Kageyama to come to Brazil, after all, just as there is no reason for Hinata to improve other than for himself.

* * *

During the training period for Kageyama’s first Olympics, the first thing he discovers is that his diet needs to be adjusted, according to his trainers. Luckily, Kageyama already eats well and frequently because he is a pro athlete, and so these changes are not as jarring as they might have been otherwise. Diet and exercise is equally important, and a typical meal schedule might look like this:

Approximately fifty-seven percent of Kageyama’s daily calorie intake will be derived from carbohydrates. That means fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. 

About twenty to twenty-five percent of these calories will come from lean proteins like poultry, fish, beans, and low-fat dairy. Twenty or thirty percent or so of _that_ will come from high quality fats; avocados, olive oil, nut butters, and yoghurt. He can intake between forty to sixty grams of sugar a day. He will drink between eleven and fifteen cups of water daily - too little and he will be dehydrated, too much and he will suffer from overhydration, and his sodium levels will be so low that he will suffer from nausea, dizziness, muscle cramps, and in severe cases, seizures and death.

This is what he is told, at least, and so he eats both more and less than he is used to, four to six times every day. It’s not like he really enjoys it. He eats because he needs to have a healthy body if he wants to play volleyball for a very long time. He enjoys volleyball, and does not want to collapse on the court. He eats because without food, the body will die from exhaustion and other health complications. He will disappoint everyone he knows, and he won’t be able to keep playing volleyball.

 _Oh, no, Tobio-chan,_ a gleeful voice in the back of his mind reminds him, sounding suspiciously like the former captain of the Aobosi Seijoh volleyball team, _there are more than one ways to die. Sickness of the body, sickness of the brain, and sickness of the heart, to name three. Of course, there’s regular old homicide, but nobody really prepares for that, do they?_

No, Kageyama decides, they do not, and he resolves to ignore the strange numbness he feels until it goes away, because now that he is an adult, he has work to do, and many things to worry about. 

He is reminded that he is not good at making friends, or at smiling or making small-talk, and while he is very good at volleyball, there are many people who are better than he is, and who know more than he does. He is alright with that, because that is how it has always been. 

Miwa calls him once to twice a week, asking him if he is eating well (better than he ever has) and if he has heard from Hinata (yes, we text) and if she can swing by in a few days because she’ll be in town and she might as well (yes, if you’d like), and How are you? You sound strange over the phone, you’re sure that you’re sleeping well? (I’m fine).

Officially, he is on the track for great things, and he is only nineteen. 

Privately, he thinks that if this emptiness gets any bigger, it will swallow and eat him while he is sleeping. He’s so lonely, sometimes, he wishes he were dead. Something else he discovers during this period:

Hinata Shouyou,

I love you so much that I’m going to let you kill me.

* * *

[ dumbass shouyou ]

LOOK WHO I FOUND IN RIO! 

_[ Tap to Download ]_

IMG_2102.JPG

1.3 MB / 1.3 MB

_[10:15 am]_

  
  
  


_**Read 10: 20 am** _

One of Kageyama’s teammates is passing by, and Kageyama reaches out, tugs on his jacket sleeve and turns the screen towards him.

Ushijima, who is a giant, looms over his shoulder and leans in closer than Kageyama is used to. Kageyama cradles his phone in his hand like a secret, or a bomb, maybe.

There is a lot to dislike about Ushijima upon first glance, but just as much to admire, even begrudgingly. There’s a lot to like about him, too, if you look closely enough.

He is a surprisingly good listener, Kageyama has learned.

Together, he and Kageyama stare at the picture. It is very strange. Oikawa is sticking his tongue out, and Kageyama is reminded of junior high, when Oikawa would make faces at him when he thought he wasn’t looking. Hinata is also sticking out his tongue. He looks like he is having fun. Oikawa was a better setter than him. For all Kageyama knows, he might be still. 

Oikawa is not an Olympian, though, or a titan. He is not even a giant.

When Kageyama uncurls his fist, he notices the crescent moons pressed into his palms, glowing white and telling on his skin. Ushijima only hums knowingly, and Kageyama kind of regrets showing him. 

One similarity between Ushijima and Kageyama is that they are lucky that they are very good at volleyball. It is not their only similarity, but it is the most important one.

* * *

One day in their third year:

Hinata asks, “Do you have a ten year plan, Kageyama?” He sounds skeptical before he’s even answered.

“Yeah,” Kageyama says defensively. “Obviously.” What Kageyama doesn’t say is _duh, dumbass. You kind of have a starring role._

“Well?”

“Well _what?_ ”

“What is it?”

“It’s, well - it’s - I’m working on it!”

“Oh, that’s alright, then.” Hinata settles back. “I’m still working on mine, too. I know it’s a little late, but since we’re third years now, we really should come up with some sort of plan.”

“Yeah,” Kageyama agrees, hoping that his voice doesn’t sound as distant as he feels.

He wonders if this is what the third years felt like, during their first year of club, right after their loss to Aoba Johsai. He’d never imagined it before, but he can see it now, Daichi and Suga and Asahi all huddled together and discussing their futures. 

Kageyama never asked Suguwara then, but now he might ask: When did you know you wanted to be a teacher? Why do you care for people? How do you take on something you cannot see, or touch, or even predict? 

If he had asked, Suga would not have quite known how to answer. He is only a boy, after all, and Daichi and Asahi are boys, too. How terrified they must’ve been. 

Kageyama is good at hitting the things in front of him, but there is no angle or direction that will stall the future. She is coming for you, and she will take you whether you are brave or not. 

Suga sees everything, but even he can’t read the future. There is no game sense to it. They have just lost to Seijoh. For all they know, they will keep losing. 

What actually happens is this: The three of them will lead Karasuno back to nationals and back to its former glory, and behind them will trail a team of players that will be ranked third in the nation. This is what will happen, but to them, it is a distant hope, not an absolute.

How brave of them to stay. Now he wonders why they did.

Oh, Tobio, the answer is so much closer than you think. You of all people should understand.

 _Love_. It makes things and people sacred.

Sometime after that, but not _that_ after:

“What does the King think about Brazil?” Tsukki asks shrewdly. Hinata can’t help but feel like there’s another question there, somewhere, hidden. “It’s been a while since the Wonder Duo wasn’t attached at the hip.”

“I haven’t told him yet.”

Tsukki stops to look down at him. His face is blank, but Hinata knows better than to relax. His fingers press harder into the ball in his hands, and the pads of his fingertips flatten as though he is applying pressure to a hard shell, unyielding.

“You two are pretty stupid...”

“But?”

“That’s it.” Tsukki informs him, after a moment. The lens of his glasses are smoldering. He’s probably imagining Hinata being burned at the stake like a witch, or something equally gratifying.

“Thanks.” Hinata says glumly, and bounces the ball against the ground. 

He closes his eyes to imagine it, flames licking at the sides of him, white-hot and hungry, climbing from his feet to his hands, devouring what it can reach. Villagers in big black hats, waving pitchforks and marching in a circle. In the front of the crowd, Kageyama hefts a torch, looking angry. When he comes closer, though, he looks sad, mostly.

Hinata opens his eyes to watch the ball meet the floor once, then twice, and then roll half-heartedly off to the side and out of bounds. He doesn’t blame it. They are graduating this year, and Hinata will tell him soon. Tomorrow, maybe. There’s no need to rush - Karasuno will be here tomorrow, and the day after that. 

The next day, as they are walking down the bike path towards home, Hinata forgets to mention it. Hinata will keep forgetting to mention it for two months.

On accident.

On purpose.

* * *

Paul Varjak : So what? So plenty! I love you, you belong to me!

Holly Golightly : [tearfully] No. People don't belong to people.

Paul Varjak : Of course they do!

Holly Golightly : I'll never let ANYBODY put me in a cage.

Paul Varjak : I don't want to put you in a cage, I want to love you! 

CUT TO:

Two people in a bed, in a room that is quite dark but not so much that one can not see the other if they try. They are two men, nearly boys. Outside, it is 2018. 

They are making love. One of them is, anyway. His eyes are closed and burning, and he knows that if he opens them, he will see something beneath him that has been haunting him for many years, and that sight will be beautiful but joyless. He can see with his hands and his lips and his skin, and that is better, because the contact is scorching like coals, and he wants this to last. _“C’mon, let go,”_ he groans in the dark, and underneath him, he is answered with a gasp, a huff of breath.

Of what?

The past. We don’t need it.

_"People who can't hit my tosses are nothin' but scrubs."_

_Oho,_ the future smiled. _You’ll eat your words, Atsumu._

Light, barely-realized, slants through the blinds and gently colors the darkness blue. One is sated, and the other is hungry for more, clinging to what he can reach. Outside, the sun has just risen and the morning air is cool and sweet. Although he does not truly believe in any god, he prays anyway. 

Just let them have this moment in this place, he asks, where the future and all of her promises do not exist.

END SCENE

* * *

During Hinata’s stint with Jackals, he soon finds that Atsumu is not just an odd bedfellow, but an odd fellow.

After practice, Hinata feels as though he might collapse, but he does not think so, and he stays right-side-up in spite of his exhaustion. “What do you think will happen when you die?” Hinata pants in half-seriousness, gripping the frame of his locker to steady himself. Hinata might die, if not for his willpower. The cool metal is slick against the hot pads of his fingers. 

On the other side of the bench, Atsumu squints in consideration and lowers his water bottle. “He’ll cry, but my money will go to Osamu, probably. It’ll help him feed the five cats he adopts when he is a depressed old man with no children.”

“That’s -” not what Hinata meant, but it is an answer - “very considerate of you.”

“Isn’t it?” Atsumu smiles, in good humor. “That’s me, always thinking of other people.”

“Speaking of which, I’ve been thinking.”

“Oh?” Atsumu raises his eyebrows.

“Can we start locking the locker room doors? Is there a key? Can we do that? Or just, I don’t know, go somewhere else?”

“Shouyou, are you just trying to get me alone?” His grin is a sideways, sleazy thing. Atsumu is lucky that he is attractive enough to pull it off. Hinata pokes him in the shoulder.

“Yeah, actually. Alone. If Bokuto keeps walking in on us, I think we’re going to break his mind and spirit, and I can tell you from secondhand experience that we don’t want him off his game. I think him witnessing us having sex has happened one or two too many times.”

“Maybe it’s a sign?” Sakusa suggests from the other, other side of the bench. His mask is discarded, no doubt because of the humidity of the locker rooms, but Sakusa does look appropriately revolted. Hinata notes with no small amount of guilt that he opens his own locker door with a towel wrapped around the handle. 

Meanwhile, Atsumu’s eyebrows climb to new heights, and his face contorts in joy and wonder. “Wow. I didn’t know you had it in you, Omi-kun.”

Sakusa’s face contorts in disgust. “Oh, shut your mouth, and wipe that look off your face,” he snaps crossly.

“Now you look mad.”

“And you look like Helen Keller the first time she touched water.”

“Who?” Hinata asks.

“A _sign,”_ Atsumu repeats to himself, fascinated.

“No, not that kind of sign. Gross.”

“Gross,” Hinata agrees.

“I meant that maybe it’s a sign that the two of you should stop having sex in semi-public places?”

“Ya’ know, I think kinkshaming went out of style a few years ago, and -”

“And I think that you’re interfering with my livelihood,” Sakusa says mournfully, “one locker door at a time.”

“Oh, god,” Astumu, who does not believe in god, says. “That’s too bad.”

There is a phenomenon that happens to some people, sometimes, when they are surrounded by a crowd, in that they will perform better and more confidently than they would if they were alone. This is called social facilitation, but it does not happen to everyone. Sometimes, an audience will cause someone to perform worse, because there are far too many eyes and not enough personal space. Luckily, there is a workaround, used by actors, lawyers, and people in the customer service industry - essentially, anyone who must utilize some form of lying as a profession. See, this trick is very simple but very difficult if you cannot get out of your own head. You must simply tell yourself what it is you need to believe, and then believe it.

For example, when Hinata was trying and failing in Brazil, he thought: _I may not be as strong as I think I am, but I have my legs, and I have my resolution._

_Aha,_ he would correct himself, _I am exactly as strong as I think I am._ And he was, and so he grew wings.

“I think, therefore I am,” he concludes, after he has finished explaining this to Sakusa, who looks very interested. The locker room is far behind them, and they are standing in the middle of Atsumu’s living room, while the host and several other teammates contribute to an unholy din in the kitchen. Barnes is sprawled across the couch, fast asleep, too far gone and too late for Hinata to wake him up and warn him.

“Descartes?”

“No, Bokuto.” 

Sakusa’s face falls. “I think I saw Bokuto eat dish soap the other day.” He did. He saw it on Bokuto’s Snapchat story.

“No, it was hand soap,” Hinata corrects. He knows what Sakusa means, though. “Bokuto is actually very smart, Omi-kun.”

“Sakusa, but yes, I know.” Sakusa thinks that Hinata and Bokuto have a very odd but fitting relationship. He calls him _Disciple_ , which might be offensive given that the two are on an equal playing field, but there is a truth to the nickname, as well. Hinata is like Bokuto, only smaller and more orange. Hinata continues,

“I asked him, once, if he gets nervous when he plays, and he told me, ‘sure, all the time, but when Akaashi is on my side, it’s like I have the world on my side, too’!’” Sakusa still looks doubtful, but not too doubtful. Bokuto is an undeniably excellent player when he has his head on right, and when he doesn’t, Hinata suspects that he is a kind of genius. Even if everything he says doesn’t always make sense, he usually gets what he means anyway - Hinata is a sum of his parts, after all, and might as well make them count. It is good advice.

In Bokuto language, having the world on your side is having someone in your corner, a most-important-person to whom you can look at and think, _when there’s no more volleyball, there’s you._

* * *

You might have wondered what happened, exactly, after they walked out of that small coffee shop together and into the world to greet Karasuno. Here we are, back at the beginning, nearly where we started. 

The group walks a block to a park, where Asahi can unintentionally terrify the children on the swing sets and Tanaka can favorably compare Kiyoko’s beauty to the flowered shrubs surrounding the park benches. Hinata sits down with his hot chocolate and his pastry, and Kageyama joins him. For a while, they watch Nishinoya beg Asahi to push him on the swings while the little children next to them shriek in delighted terror.

“You told me you were being haunted, a while ago?” he asks, not knowing what to say. It was a stray text from months ago that stuck with him. Kageyama read it in the evening in a hotel room. For Hinata, it was approximately three in the morning. It was not the first time that Kageyama worried, but Hinata assured him that he was just a little intoxicated, and a little sad. Kageyama suspects it was more than that.

“Yeah. By a ghost. It was kind of an asshole.” Hinata cocks his head. Key word, _was._

“It doesn’t bother you anymore?”

“Nah, not really.”

“What happened to it?”

“I made friends with it.”

It hurts to think that Hinata didn’t reciprocate his feelings in high school, as repressed as they were. It hurts indefinitely more to think that Hinata might have been in love with him once, or had the inclination at one point, but was dissuaded of it through one of Kageyama’s many faults. Which one? His rudeness, maybe, or his hardwired fear of intimacy, equally as likely. Or maybe Atsumu really is that good of a setter.

Kageyama examines his own hands. His fingers are long and calloused where they should be, with nails clipped clean and close to the beds.

“Hinata. I know you said I didn’t have to say anything, but I should. I want to. That phonecall, after the game, it was -” _bad form,_ he remembers, “- it was stupid of me. I wasn’t thinking.” I was overthinking.

“I wouldn't expect anything less,” Hinata says, smiling. He looks curious. “I mean, it confused me, even when I got out of bed this morning.” Usually, he will sleep on something, and it will be resolved when he wakes, or of little importance. “What was it about?”

Kageyama takes a deep breath, then another one, deeper. There are a lot of things he’d give to Hinata. This, most of all.

Hurry up, you might be thinking. What is it?

Do not worry. I will tell you.

That thing, the thing that Tobio had wanted to give to Hinata all along but couldn’t, is the truth. The whole truth, and nothing but the truth. It is the greatest and most difficult thing any boy or man can ever give, because it is a part of himself that lives for nothing in return, that exists because it exists. When Kageyama was a boy, he was not ready. He is a man, now, and he has prepared himself for this for a long time.

Here I go, he thinks, and steels himself for that great beyond. 

* * *

There’s this thing, you know, about letting things go and letting things come back to you and - 

_What if it doesn’t come back?_

If you let it go, Tobio, it means _you_ loved it, for real. That’s the important bit. People aren’t broken ships, or things, they’re people. “How do you do it?” he asks before he can stop himself. He does not answer the question.

“Do what?”

“Get out of bed in the morning.” For a few years, he’s been dead in places he can’t reach. He follows his prescription of Rest. Exercise. Paxil. Happy. Speak. Repeat. Kageyama wonders how much he does not know about Hinata.

“Well, I - you know, I swing my legs over the side, and -”

“Are you happy?” is what he really wants to ask, and he does.

Hinata looks up at him, and something inside Kageyam’s chest shakes frantically, like a grain of rice rattling inside a drum. He smiles. His teeth are white and pearly, like the inside of an oyster, and his eyes crease with the movement. 

Hinata is a very good kisser. Distantly, he wonders where he learned. 

(He’s climbed that mountain. He gets that view from the top.

“I’m here,” he crows. Kageyama, in love, opens his mouth to speak.)

Together, they are in this ebb and flow of meeting and leaving again, of rising over the top of mountains to say _hello_ and sinking back into the sky and out of reach. In this life, Kageyama closes his eyes, squeezes his eyes shut until the dark swirls into static, and so it begins: a life of adulthood.

* * *

To spell it out, this is a fantasy. That’s not what happens. What happens is:

A timely interruption can be a variety of things. A bell rings, a piano falls from the sky, or an old lover returns from the past to muck things up. Oftentimes, it is a device that is the most convenient and inconvenient of things, for if it had never happened, then the medium in which it occurs would likely be shorter by several pages, or minutes, or frames. A timely interruption is an omen of sorts, a warning - this will not go on as planned. In this case, it is an announcement.

Asahi and Nishinoya are planning a trip around the world. The nature of this trip is not specified, and we will not speculate as to give them privacy. That being said, Hinata thinks it sounds romantic, and Kageyama repeats the sentiment, withholding _expensive and complicated,_ although it must show on his face, because Noya only laughs, pats him on the shoulder, and asks him to never change. 

Tanaka and Kiyoko are married, and Suga and Daichi are well on their way, and Tsukishima is content with his museum and his career, and Yamaguchi and Yachi are excited that they will be working soon, once they graduate. 

They have all grown a little taller, a little wiser, and a little happier. Kageyama is glad for them and glad for change, because the thing he has come to realize about Karasuno is that she will be there tomorrow, and the day after that. 

* * *

Although his welcome has not yet expired, Hinata’s contract is up. He is going back to Brazil to play for Asas São Paulo.

On his second-to-last day, he lingers in the locker rooms and waits for the rest of his friends to file out until it is empty, nearly. On the opposite side of the bench, his teammate stands with his back to him. It is like he is reliving the days prior. 

“Hey,” Hinata says, breaking into the silence.

Atsumu turns around. “Hey, Shouyou.” His grin is slightly crooked, which makes Hinata feel slightly crooked, too. “It’s a little late for some private lessons, but all you’ve gotta do is ask.” Atsumu sounds nowhere near as hopeful as he did the first time, but Hinata hears the offer loud and clear. 

He has seen him naked and golden in the morning. He has seen him when he is beautiful, and for that Hinata is grateful. 

“You know, I never thanked you.”

“For what?” Atsumu’s smile has gone un-crooked, thinned into a weary line. Hinata kind of hates the sight. He looks at him and thinks back to when he kind of hated him, when he thought that Atsumu was just an asshole with broad shoulders and a mouth he couldn't trust. In retrospect, Hinata doesn’t think he was wrong, exactly, but he wasn’t exactly right, either. 

“For everything. You taught me a lot.”

“Yeah. I’m glad I could help.”

“We never talked about -”

“We don’t need to.”

“You’re a good person, Atsumu. Really. You make really good soup, too. You should...you should find someone who can eat it.”

“I think - that’s ok, Hinata. Really.”

“It’s not. It was really good soup,” he repeats, because he needs Atsumu to understand that.

“I usually end up...I make a mess of things.” He doesn’t even sound resigned. He says this like he really believes it and has made peace with it. Before, Atsumu was afraid. He was afraid of dying alone, and that he would wake up and find another man in bed with them. This fear came alive and took on shape like water until spasming into stillness.

Well, goddamn. There is a lot that can be said in silence. Someone has to break that train of thought, wherever it might lead.

“Someone who’s really good at cleaning up your messes, then.” Hinata’s mother had once told him, in a way, that some ghosts exist because we cannot handle the truth. Others exist because the truth follows us, and we love them for it. “I’ll miss you. You’re the - you’re the best setter I've ever had. Just...remember me sometimes, alright?” 

Atsumu laughs, and it is a joyful, brittle sound. “Always, Shouyou.”

When a person loves you:

They will see you when you are kind, when you are cruel, when you are impressive and when you are boring. 

They will see you when you are quiet and angry and will not speak to them for days, even when you are right next to each other, and they will see you when you are triumphant and you have gone vicious with it. 

They will see all of that, the good and the bad and the in-between, and they will still love you.

Why? I don’t know. 

You’ll have to see for yourself.

* * *

During the first year, Hinata sends him postcards, with prints of colorful birds, bodies of water in strokes of blue and green and yellow, and famous paintings that he does not recognize, replicated and pressed flat in mass distribution. Kageyama has been to Rio, but has never lived there, and Hinata gets the feeling that he was never a tourist, either. His letters are mostly brief, and very careful, but he makes sure that whatever Kageyama reads, he cannot mistake for something it is not.

Brazil is a beautiful place, full of beautiful people. Hinata misses him. 

Kageyama Tobio is playing for Ali Romana, in Italy. Hinata has never been to Italy, but he thinks he might like to go - if not to visit Kageyama, then to try the pizza, at least.

He keeps sending postcards.

In the summer of 2020, one year before the Tokyo Olympics, Hinata receives a postcard in return, the ninth ever. To his surprise, when he hefts the envelope, it has weight to it. Upon closer examination, he finds that it is not a only postcard but a letter folded up neatly and shoved behind a printed image of an oil painting of the Colosseum. Briefly, he wonders if Kageyama has ever seen it in person.

He shakes out the letter in one hand and for a second, worries that someone has died. It is in Kageyama’s handwriting, no doubt.

It reads:

Hinata,

It’s only been two years, you know. It feels like a lot longer. I have been busy, but mostly I did not know what to write. I got your last postcards. They’re on my apartment wall. I’m sorry I haven’t written back, or sent postcards. I had to work through some stuff.

When I was a kid, my therapist told me that some people write letters as a coping mechanism for grief. You don’t have to send them anywhere, because just getting the words out makes you feel better. I wrote some when my grandfather died, but I hadn’t written any until recently. I have a few letters addressed to you, and to Oikawa and to my parents and a few other people, but I am never going to send those because Oikawa might make fun of me for it, and because some of the letters addressed to my parents are very angry. They are very busy, and I don’t want to upset them.

I think I will send this one, though, because I’m not angry with you. Mostly, I am sorry.

Do you remember when Miwa cut my hair? You laughed at me, and even though I wanted you to like it, or to think that I looked handsome, I didn’t really mind, because it made me feel a little different and that made me feel good. You told me that you weren’t going to meet me in Rio because you hadn’t changed enough, and I think I was trying to understand. ~~I was in love with you, but~~ I was so afraid that I didn’t really know you anymore.   
  


~~You asked me once if I had a ten-year-plan, and I didn’t have to tell you then that it was volleyball, because we both already knew that, but I should have told you that my plan was _volleyball_ and _you,_ and it was something that I didn’t even have to think about, really, because I just sort of knew it. I didn’t think I had to say it, and that made me kind of relieved because I was too scared to say it anyway~~. You told me you were going to Brazil three days before graduation. I remember we were walking down the street after school when you told me, and I didn’t react like I should’ve. I don’t think I said it then, either, but I wanted you to stay. I know that wasn’t fair. I just thought you were going to wait. In a way, I was going to wait for you, but I’m not sure now what I thought that meant. I just thought we had agreed on it without even talking about it. Maybe it was just me. If it is, that’s okay.

~~I went to the Olympics without you. I couldn’t tell you to wait, so I didn’t.~~

When she finished cutting my hair, I told Miwa all of this, and the whole time she crossed her arms and tapped her foot and looked very unimpressed. 

I said, “I didn’t know change was something you needed to make. I thought it just happened,” And here, she pointed at me and said,

“You’re pretty young, Tobio, and you’ve got plenty of time to be the person you want to be. You’re older, too, though, so really you should take some initiative,” or something like that, and I don’t remember exactly what I said after that. 

Maybe I didn’t say anything, but that doesn’t mean that I wasn’t thinking it, that she was right and all this time, I haven’t been very brave.

You are so much bigger than me. You aren’t afraid, but when you are, you’re brave anyway. 

I think you should be with someone who is braver than me, and who is not afraid to tell you that he is in love with you, and has been for some time. 

I am not asking you to be in a relationship with me. I do not think that I would be a very good person to be in a relationship with. I would want us to do things together, but I don’t like the things that you like, except for volleyball. I do not think you would have as much fun with me as you would without me. You might not think that’s true, but I do. 

That’s what the phone call was about, sort of. I wanted to kiss you, in high school, and on that bench in the park. I wasn’t ready to talk about it. Now I am. That’s what you do for people. 

My grandfather promised me that if I got really, really good at volleyball, someone better would always find me, and I wouldn’t be alone. 

When I was sixteen, I didn’t know what you were to me. Then I had it all figured it out, and then I didn’t do anything about it because I was afraid. I have always wanted to meet you, I think. I still do. 

You’ll be here in a few months. When you get here, I have an apartment.

See you then.

— Tobio

Hinata folds the letter back in on itself, feeling along the creases that Kageyama had pressed into the paper before him. He was never very good at English, but he is good at Kageyama, and at other things. Here, he has spelled it out for him so that he cannot mistake it for something it is not.

Oh, Tobio, he thinks, don’t worry.

I have a feeling we’re always gonna end up this way, right here, together.

* * *

At a party, in the middle of Daichi and Suga’s dining room:

“So,” Tanaka says, “that means that you’ve seen Oikawa naked at _least_ once, right?” Hinata, who will be an Olympian, cringes. Between the jetlag and the line of questioning, Hinata is too tired for this. 

“Tanaka.”

“Unless it was dark, I guess, but even then -”

“Tanaka, please -”

“I’m just saying, that’s not gonna be weird looking him in the eyes on the other side of the net?”

“No, it’s _not going to be weird,_ okay?” Hinata says. It’s not weird unless he makes it weird.

“Okay.” After a beat, he thoughtfully adds, “I mean, you’ve also seen Kageyama naked, so if anything, it cancels out.”

“Tanaka-senpai, I’m begging you to stop talking.”

“What are you talking about?” Kageyama asks, having conveniently wandered across the room and into the conversation. Of course he does.

“If anything, it means that you hold the power,” Tanaka continues obliviously despite Hinata’s frantic cutting motions across his neck to _fucking stop, please_ , “because within that room, you and you alone are gonna know who has the best -”

“ _SERVE,_ ” Hinata interrupts.

“Dick,” Tanaka finishes for him. Kageyama looks between the two of them. “Not that - not that it matters,” Tanaka adds generously, “unless it matters to you, Hinata. And you’re just too nice to say anything.”

Next to him, Kageyama’s face is carefully blank. “I’m going back into the kitchen,” he tells them, and does just that.

Hinata looks at him. Tanaka looks back at him. Hinata can feel Kageyama looking at the both of them from behind the doorway.

In the kitchen, frantically:

[ Oikawa Tooru ]

_[12:50 pm]_

Hey

what do u want

Oikawa-san, I have a question

* * *

2021 Tokyo Olympics, Men’s Volleyball. Day Twelve:

_“On the other side of the net, all eyes are on him. Shouyou Hinata, the Greatest Decoy! After two years of beach volleyball in Brazil, he returned to Japan and joined the V. League. In this, his first Olympic appearance, he gets to play alongside his old teammate, Kageyama. In high school, they were feared as potent masters of aerial combat.”_

“Set the ball a bunch for me, okay?” 

“If your bumps are good enough.” Next to him, his partner carries a number ten on his back. It is all different, but the same. 

_“Wow, that was fast! Karasuno high school’s legendary tandem once again flies across the court!”_

Hinata!

I’m here!

* * *

In a dream, they are hand in hand. Hinata turns to him, and the sun hits his bare skin and shines gold all around them when he smiles. In a whisper - _There are many great players, but for me, there is only you._

Kageyama thanks him, and wonders for whose benefit it is said, but he does not wonder for long, because he knows that no matter who said it, or who needs it most, Hinata means it. Besides, they both heard it.

“You’ve forgiven me then, right?”

“I have.”

“What are you doing after this?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll see the world,” he says easily.

 _The world is going to see you, too, Hinata,_ Kageyama thinks, and Hinata only stretches and swings his legs, staring over the mountainside and into the sky ahead.

_I’m counting on it._

* * *

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


_This is the story. Do I have your attention?_

  
  
  


2022, Palalottomatica, Rome. FIVB Volleyball Men's World Championship, finals:

Of course, everything begins and ends on a court.

“Today…” says one player.

“Today, once again,” says another, from the other side of the net.

And together, _“I’m going to win.”_

The ball moves into play, and the teams take to the air like they have wings. Then, they scatter in one direction, _up_ , like a shriek of birds fleeing to the East. 

  
  


  
  


  
  


  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The working music for this piece was [Remember When](https://youtu.be/CIVwcpbbfz0) by Wallows. I also made a [soundtrack on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0L5fyvTCqvVjoXQoafcUZo?si=4HdHWq5WRimfzewRgucYrA).
> 
> _Thought I saw your shadow under the door  
>  Just a trick of the light I've seen before  
> I can never tell what's real anymore  
> Anymore, anymore  
> …  
> All the places I return to  
> All the faces that remind you_
> 
> _I can still see you at the place I know when I close my eyes  
>  Do you remember when we felt like the only two alive?  
> Don't let me be one of the people that seek a lost romance  
> Would you rewind, do it all over again? Given the chance?_
> 
> I’d like to thank my editor, [astrae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aastrae/pseuds/aastrae), for looking over this monstrosity at the drop of a hat. She is a treasure with eyes that can find the smallest of inconsistencies and also probably read your soul like a magazine cover. Absolutely goddamn golden, Ponyboy. 
> 
> I also need to thank everyone who got this far, to my readers who respond so incredibly that it thrills and baffles me. I wrote the first chapter for myself, but the rest are for you.
> 
> Feel free to kudo if you enjoyed or want to see more! I try to read and respond to every comment, and I’d love to read your feedback. ♡


	4. only blindly i could read you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> extra credit scene ft. Oikawa, a midnight phone call, and _“Why does Tobio need to know how big your dick is?”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This isn’t a fourth chapter, not really, but it is a follow-up to Kageyama’s unasked question.

When Oikawa was a very young child, he thought that the stars could talk and sing amongst themselves after everyone had gone to sleep, and imagined that he was the only boy in Japan, or maybe even the world, to know their secret. He was too young to be properly dissuaded of the notion, and later on, when his suspicions delve into the realm of extraterrestrial instead, the secret of the singing stars will be tucked into the recesses of childhood memory that rarely resurface, except in the oddest and rarest of moments.

Now, imagine this: there is a space in between when we are _not-quite-awake_ but _not-quite-asleep_ , a state of consciousness in which we toe the line between being useful and being dead to the world. If our minds are adequately conscious, we might feel a euphoric sense of balance in the universe, in that nothing is merely right or wrong, but rather _is_. It is only later, when we take the plunge into the unconscious that the things we invent when we are scared and lonely and desperate fight their way to the surface and disrupt the peace.

* * *

Oikawa is twenty-six. He is drifting in between sleep and wakefulness when a phone call disrupts the balance of the universe.

* * *

Tooru gropes blindly across the surface of the bedside table, fingers fumbling over discarded glasses and a worn wallet before closing around the phone vibrating insistently against the wooden tabletop. He pulls it to his ear and stifles a yawn.

“Oikawa Tooru, this is he,” he recites mechanically into the phone, still half-asleep. The ridge of his phone case is pressed uncomfortably against the corner of his jaw, and he makes a halfhearted effort to correct his grip.

 _“What is this?”_ demands the voice on the other end, sounding rough. Despite his annoyance, the familiarity pulls his mouth into a half smile, and he fights the lethargy to crack one eye open.

“What did you mean? It’s late for me right now, and I need rest. Wait to talk to me tomorrow,” Tooru mumbles half into the receiver, half into his pillow. If he were more alert, he might have crooned it, if only for the satisfaction of knowing that his childhood friend is screwing up his face in irritation. He imagines it now, squinting, and the voice over the phone coordinates with the picture in his mind’s eye like choreography.

_“You idiot, why did you send me this?”_

“Send you what?”

_“This screenshot.”_

“That was hours ago, and you’re responding now?” Oikawa allows himself to yawn and then stretches, kicking one foot over the corner of his sheets and crossing his legs, the right exposed to the night air and the left firmly tucked under the warmth of his blankets. 

_“Why does Tobio need to know how big your dick is?”_

Oikawa pretends to nonchalantly examine his nails - while he is regrettably alone in his apartment, he’s sure that the gesture would be appreciated. “The real question is, who doesn’t? Now, this might come as a great shock to you, but I am very popular, and -”

_“What did you even tell him?”_

“Rude,” he scoffs at the interruption, but he doesn’t really mean it. They’ve done this long enough to know that there’s no real anger, but the relief of prolonged contact. In his mind, there is a foot tapping, a nose bridge being pinched, but it’s partly for show, partly mandatory to keep up the reaction. This is what they do. He can see it almost as clearly as if it was in front of him. Oikawa does not say, _I left him on read, like I have done for half of his texts for the past decade,_ because what’s the fun in that? Instead, he tilts the phone closer to his and makes sure that Hajime will be able to hear the smile in his voice when he sweetly asks, “Why do you want to know?” 

Iwaizumi promptly hangs up on him. He doesn’t call back, but he will.

There’s little else to do other than go back to sleep. He has practice tomorrow, anyway, and needs to pull at least five more hours of sleep, especially now that his routine has been interrupted. He has wasted enough time. There’s hardly a point in answering unasked questions, after all.

* * *

Tooru settles back into his pillows, closes his eyes, and waits for sleep to retake him. Outside, the night is characteristically still. The stars, it seems, have nothing to say.

 _Oh, Iwa-chan,_ he thinks into the silence, _some things you’ll just have to find out for yourself._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story has been concluded, I promise. This is just a short bonus scene, Marvel-end-credits-scene style, but it is also a kernel for a future Iwaoi piece that has yet to be written. Please stand by.
> 
> Kudo if you enjoyed or would like to see more!  
> I try to read and respond to every comment, and I’d love to read your feedback. ♡

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [have my sympathy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24909823) by [pissedofsandwich](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pissedofsandwich/pseuds/pissedofsandwich)




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